Politics and Culture in Twentieth-Century Germany (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture)

Politics and Culture in Twentieth-Century Germany

Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture Edited by James Hardin (South Carolina)


   

     


 

     

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Copyright © 2003 the Contributors All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. First published 2003 by Camden House Camden House is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620 USA and of Boydell & Brewer Limited PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK ISBN: 1–57113–223–6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Politics and culture in twentieth-century Germany / edited by William Niven and James Jordan. p. cm. — (Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–57113–223–6 (alk. paper) 1. German literature — 20th century — History and criticism. 2. Politics and literature — Germany — History — 20th century. 3. Politics and culture — Germany — History — 20th century. 4. Germany — Intellectual life — 20th century. I. Niven, William John, 1956– II. Jordan, James, 1959– III. Series: Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture (Unnumbered) PT405.P578 2003 830.9'358—dc21 2003001571 A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. This publication is printed on acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America.

Contents Introduction

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William Niven

From Nature to Modernism: The Concept and Discourse of Culture in Its Development from the Nineteenth into the Twentieth Century

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Fritz Wefelmeyer

The German “Geist und Macht” Dichotomy: Just a Game of Red Indians?

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Stuart Parkes

“In the Exile of Internment” or “Von Versuchen, aus einer Not eine Tugend zu machen”: German-Speaking Women Interned by the British during the Second World War

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Charmian Brinson

“Deutschland lebt an der Nahtstelle, an der Bruchstelle”: Literature and Politics in Germany 1933–1950

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David Basker

“Das habe ich getan, sagt mein Gedächtnis. Das kann ich nicht getan haben, sagt mein Stolz! . . .” History and Morality in Hochhuth’s Effis Nacht

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Hans-Joachim Hahn

Stefan Heym and GDR Cultural Politics

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Reinhard K. Zachau

Reviving the Dead: Montage and Temporal Dislocation in Karls Enkel’s Liedertheater David Robb

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Living Without Utopia: Four Women Writers’ Responses to the Demise of the GDR

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Gisela Shaw

A Worm’s Eye View and a Bird’s Eye View: Culture and Politics in Berlin since 1989

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Ulrike Zitzlsperger

Remembering for the Future, Engaging with the Present: National Memory Management and the Dialectic of Normality in the “Berlin Republic”

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Caroline Gay

“Wie kannst du mich lieben?”: “Normalizing” the Relationship between Germans and Jews in the 1990s Films Aimée und Jaguar and Meschugge

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Stuart Taberner

Models of the Intellectual in Contemporary France and Germany: Silence and Communication

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John Marks

Notes on the Contributors

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Index

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Introduction William Niven

Looking Back from the 1990s

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of unification, a debate was triggered in the feuilletons of German newspapers by the publication of Christa Wolf’s “Erzählung” Was bleibt (1990), in which an author describes her life under surveillance by the East German Security Service (Stasi). This debate, known as the “Literaturstreit,” centered on Wolf herself, and on those other East German writers who had, in West Germany, formerly been 1 admired for their between-the-lines criticism of the GDR. Had they staged literary resistance, as Wolf’s story appeared to imply, or had they in reality been lackeys of the state, shoring it up to the bitter end? When it became clear in 1992 that Christa Wolf had not only been spied on by the Stasi, but had also herself, between 1959 and 1962, been used as a GI (“Gesellschaftlicher Informant”) and IM (“Informeller Mitarbeiter”) by this notorious organization, the debate flared up anew (Vinke 1993). She was not the only example of such collaboration. Writers uncritically loyal to the GDR state, such as erstwhile President of the GDR Writers’ Union Hermann Kant, had worked together with the Stasi — yet so had writers of more critical persuasion, such as Heiner Müller, and innovative, unconventional authors such as Sascha Anderson, angrily dismissed by Wolf Biermann as “Sascha Arschloch.” The debate soon extended beyond critical scrutiny of East German literary biographies as West German authors were also subjected to a re-evaluation. Had the West German Gruppe 47, had Günter Grass and Heinrich Böll really been such savage critics of restoration politics in the FRG? Had West German writers really sought to get to grips with the legacy of Nazism, or had they not rather steered round the issue of the holocaust (see Schlant 1999)? Had not some important West German authors, such as Wolfgang Koeppen, already been active as writers under Hitler? Moreover: how naïve and misguided had many West German writers been in imagN THE EVE

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ining the socialist system in the GDR to be in some respects a more democratic order than the FRG? On 2 November 1990, literary critic Ulrich Greiner published an ar2 ticle in Die Zeit entitled “Die deutsche Gesinnungsästhetik.” This term, and parallel expressions such as “Gesinnungsliteratur,” were critically directed at what was felt by many to be the principle on which post-1945 literature had been based, namely literary anti-fascism. In their zeal to overcome the legacy of Nazism, an aspect of which had been the fateful collaboration of “Geist” and “Macht,” East German writers — supported by sympathetic West German writers, some of whom had links to the KPD (such as, albeit briefly, Martin Walser) — had merely thrown in their lot with yet another manifestation of totalitarianism: the German Democratic Republic. Moreover, literature in the service of even the most noble-minded anti-fascism and postwar democratic reconstruction, while well meant, was not, so critics such as Greiner and Frank Schirrmacher now felt, good literature. It was time to sever the bond between “Geist” and “Macht,” for reasons both of the moral health of the authors, and the aesthetic quality of their works. One might wonder at the viability of the second argument: after all, the close links between Duke Karl August and Goethe in late eighteenth-century Saxony-Weimar, or between mad King Ludwig the Second of Bavaria and Richard Wagner in the nineteenth century, hardly resulted in bad art. The moral health argument is stronger. As an American literary historian recently revealed, in addition to writing great works, Goethe had also been of the opinion that the death-penalty be retained in certain cases, an opinion instrumental in leading to the execution of the child-murderess Anna Catharina Höhne; moreover, Goethe had been more disinclined to support reform than reigning Duke Karl August (Wilson 1999). There can be no doubt that some of those involved in the “Literaturstreit” of the early 1990s sought to sever decisively the relationship between “Geist” and “Macht” in German literary history — regardless of whether this relationship be understood as collaborative or oppositional. Indeed the point of the criticism was that collaboration and opposition were often hard to disentangle. When, in 1945, exile writer Thomas Mann became embroiled in a bitter wrangle with writers Frank Thieß and Walter von Molo, both of whom had stayed in the Third Reich and published there, he suggested that the literature produced within Germany between 1933 and 1945 be pulped (1965: 649). Yet Thieß and von Molo clearly saw themselves as having staged some form of literary resistance in the form of literature of “inner emigration.” It is genuinely hard to decide in favor of one or the other argument. What,

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for instance, does one make of Ernst Wiechert, an inner emigrant whose novels appeared to celebrate Prussian behavior codes and German “Waldeinsamkeit,” yet who was incarcerated in Buchenwald in July 1938 on account of “staatsfeindliche Äußerungen” and then wrote an account of his experience in the camp which he hid until the end of the war (it was first published in 1946)? It is a moving account of the pain he endured and the solidarity he experienced — and it contains a negative description of the “Bibelforscher” in the camp that is as prejudice-laden as any lines of Nazi propaganda (1988: 116–17). For those critics such as Schirrmacher and Greiner, the Gordian knot of the whole dilemma of collaboration and opposition could only be cut cleanly through if literature were to focus once more on its “true” calling as literature: the writer should be answerable to herself or himself, unbound by extra-literary credos, moved by personal and aesthetic concerns, not political agendas. Of course the call for a depoliticization of literature, which is effectively what the “Literaturstreit” resulted in, was not as politically disinterested as might at first appear. Given that “committed” literature was generally understood within the context of the debate as anti-fascist literature, it seemed that Schirrmacher and Greiner were arguing from a right-wing perspective: seeking, in other words, to liberate united Germany at its very foundation from the supposed left-wing obsession with contrition for Nazism. Germany, they implied, was a stable and unshakeable democracy that had achieved “normality,” so that committed literature was simply out of fashion, irrelevant, indeed horribly misguided. While a more entertaining, or playful, or self-referential literature was advocated, one cannot quite shake off the suspicion that Schirrmacher and Greiner really wanted a politically impassive and thus indirectly affirmative literature, as political in its disengagement as the anti-fascist literature was in its engagement. Whatever the motives, some German authors in the 1990s have responded to the “Literaturstreit” by developing greater experimental freedom, by seeking to connect to postmodernism, and even by striving to emulate the supposedly Anglo-Saxon penchant for enter3 tainment. In a sense it may have to do so if it wishes to compete in market terms against literature from abroad, not least the works of American and British authors, which are very successful in translation in Germany and Austria. This does not mean that “serious” themes of political import have been consigned to history. But it does mean that authors, when they do broach them, can now do so without the heavy-handedness that was certainly the hallmark of pre-1990 literature in East and West. Thus Thomas Brussig’s Helden wie Wir (1995) and Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee (1999) tackle themes such as the Stasi and the politics of daily life

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in the GDR with a sense of humor that is as surprising as it is refreshing. Bernhard Schlink, in Der Vorleser (1995), dares to present the theme of the holocaust within the framework of a novel that has elements of a detective novel and a love story, not to mention the moments of what some have felt to be “pornography.”

“Geist” and “Macht” 1848–1945 It was with the “Literaturstreit” and its impact in mind that the present volume was conceived. The beginning of the new millennium seemed an appropriate moment to look back not just over the last ten years — the focus of the final chapters — but also over the last century as a whole, examining key aspects of the history of politics and culture in Germany, its complications, contradictions, collaborations, and conflicts. Arguably, developments in twentieth-century German culture cannot be fully understood without at least some reference to the concept and discourse of culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As Fritz Wefelmeyer shows in the first essay in the volume, it was only with Jakob Burckhardt in the latter half of the nineteenth century that culture came to be regarded as in some way distinct from state and religion. Burckhardt’s ideas prefigured the typical twentieth-century view that there are three subsystems: socio-cultural, politico-administrative, and economic. In the case of Germany, however, the post-1848 tendency of intellectuals and the middle classes in general to eschew direct political engagement in 4 favor of culture and education was to have fatal consequences, leading initially to political quietism but then, at the outbreak of war in 1914, to an aestheticized nationalism which lacked any appreciation of the war’s political causes or implications, let alone any sense of its potentially disastrous effects. As Wefelmeyer indicates, it was Thomas Mann who, in his Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen of 1918, drew a dividing line between what he disparagingly viewed as western civilization with its overpoliticized modes of social existence, and Germany, with its emphasis on culture and community, bound together by the metaphysical laws of the soul. There are those who would argue that this decoupling of “Geist” and “Macht,” culture and state, culture and civilization led to a tradition of German inwardness that carried within it the seeds of ethnic nationalism — in other words, it had considerable political potential for all its dismissal of politics. Much has been made in interpretations of National Socialism of the fact that Hitler was a failed artist, and it has been suggested that the Third Reich was an attempt to realize a mad artistic vision of Wagnerian proportions, right through to its Götterdämmerung-style end in 1945.

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In his examination of the relationship between “Geist” and “Macht,” Stuart Parkes contrasts Heinrich Mann’s opposition of these terms in the early decades of the twentieth century with Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s more mischievous view of 1988. For Enzensberger, the two spheres of influence and operation may have more in common than at first might appear. Parkes demonstrates that there were areas where they worked in harmony: he refers to monuments built during the Second Empire, as well as to the national enthusiasm of intellectuals at the start of the First World War and the fact that many writers, such as Gottfried Benn, threw in their lot with the Nazis. Expressionism, with its call for transformation and its evocation of a new vision for mankind, lent itself to left-wing and rightwing politicization. Several former expressionists, such as Hanns Johst, became Nazi writers. Yet Parkes is quick to defend left-wing and “bürgerlich” writers against the charge that their criticism of the Weimar Republic helped to bring it down. It was right-wing writers, such as Franz Schauwecker, whose castigations of democracy did the more substantial literary damage. After all, Thomas Mann had shown his unequivocal identification with democracy in his 1922 speech “Von deutscher Republik.” If liberal and left-wing thinkers were critical, then, it was because they were disillusioned by the reactionary elements of Weimar, by the lack of true reform in the judiciary and civil service. On 10 May 1933, the Deutsche Studentenschaft, an organization which “from its foundation in 1919 had been anti-Semitic and reactionary” (Ritchie 1983: 66), initiated with the encouragement of Goebbels the notorious Burning of the Books, during which the works of communist, Jewish, and other progressive or democratic-minded writers were committed to the flames: the works of Karl Marx, Karl Kautsky, Heinrich Mann, Erich Kästner, Sigmund Freud, Erich Maria Remarque, Kurt Tucholsky, and Carl von Ossietzsky — to name but a few — were torched in an auto-da-fé that symbolically ushered in the triumph of “Macht” over “Geist” under National Socialism. Writers rejected by the Nazis were forced into emigration. Not all were able to escape. Thus Erich Mühsam was murdered at Oranienburg concentration camp as early as July 1934. Those writers who remained had the choice between collaboration, “inner emigration” and silence. Membership of the Nazi Reichsschrifttumskammer became a prerequisite for a literary existence in the Third Reich; non-affiliation was tantamount to exclusion from publication, affiliation tantamount to streamlining. “Geist” — what was left of it — was put in the service of “Macht.” Under such conditions, 5 unambiguously oppositional art was virtually impossible.

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Yet even in the most adverse of circumstances, namely the concentration camps themselves, art could serve the function of sustaining the life-will of the prisoners. Thus cultural occasions in Buchenwald supported the attempts of the prisoners at “Selbstbehauptung” (Gedenkstätte Buchenwald 1999: 209). When American bombers destroyed an armaments factory at Buchenwald in August 1944, the famous oak tree associated with Goethe was damaged by the flames and subsequently felled by order of the SS. Bruno Apitz, later to become the author of the best-selling Buchenwald novel Nackt unter Wölfen (1958), managed to salvage a piece of wood from the tree and sculpted a death mask from it: “Das Letzte Gesicht.” The sculpture, hidden from the SS, survived the war; it symbolizes the pain of suffering and death, and implies both the destruction of humanism and the hope of transfiguration. While much is known about art in the concentration camps, virtually nothing is known about cultural activity in the internment camps for “enemy aliens” set up in Great Britain during the Second World War. Charmian Brinson uses a range of original archive sources to shed light on the cultural life of the Women’s Camp in Port Erin on the Isle of Man. The British interned both men and women on the Isle of Man, the latter group including not only Jewish refugees, political and intellectual exiles (some of them Jewish), but also women with fanatical Nazi views — such as those who had come to Britain as maids during the 1930s. Under these difficult circumstances, the female internees, particularly the socialist and communist exiles, organized educational facilities for children and a range of cultural activities, such as choirs and plays, to keep up their spirits. Interest in the internment on the Isle of Man is increasing: only recently, the Austrian writer Norbert Gstrein published a highly acclaimed novel about a (supposed) Jew interned at Douglas Camp, Die Englischen Jahre (1999).

Culture and Politics in West Germany When the war came to an end in 1945, life could begin anew in Germany, under the auspices of the British, Americans, and French in the western zones (as of 1949 the Federal Republic of Germany), and under the control of the Soviets in the eastern zone (as of 1949 the German Democratic Republic). In cultural terms, expressions such as “Stunde Null” encapsulated the wish to start afresh, seeking a new language and a new conception, freed of the ideological restraints and baggage of National Socialism. This was the tenor of the volume of “new German stories” that appeared under the title Tausend Gramm (Weyrauch 1949).

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In a somewhat chauvinistic vein, Weyrauch referred in his introduction to the “Männer des Kahlschlags” (181); although the volume did contain contributions by Marieluise Fleisser, Luise Rinser, and Annemarie Auer, the women were certainly underrepresented (three of thirty). The new literature conjured up by Weyrauch would, he wrote, provide “einen Kahlschlag in unserm Dickicht” (178). The most famous example is probably the poem “Inventur” by Günther Eich (179–80), which, in its simplicity, its strictly limited perspective, and its referentiality, represents something of that tabula rasa envisaged by Weyrauch. Yet, as David Basker shows, this new beginning was not quite as new its proponents liked to think. Basker, whose focus is West Germany, explores continuities across the apparent divide of 1945, continuities in terms of institutional controls and personnel, and of writers. According to Basker, the Information Control Division within OMGUS (the US Office of Military Government for Germany) effectively acted as the new cultural censor for the American Zone — though of course its commitment was to a culture it believed would foster democracy and re-education. More significantly, many writers who propagated new beginnings after 1945 were literarily active or in other ways compromised by their conduct in the Third Reich. Basker’s case in point is Wolfgang Koeppen. Koeppen was critical of right-wing extremism prior to 1933, only to then write unpolitically after 1933, displaying a politically quietist obsession with the inner emotional life of his protagonists. As a member of the Reichsschrifttumskammer, he was even able to call on the intervention of this organization to escape military service. Koeppen’s certainly questionable behavior during the Third Reich is mirrored by that of Alfred Andersch, another key figure in postwar West German literary life. In his essay on Andersch in the volume Luftkrieg und Literatur, writer W. G. Sebald pointed out that Andersch made a living after 1933 working in a bookshop owned by a publishing company that specialized in racist literature (1999b: 132). In March 1943, Andersch was divorced from his Jewish wife Angelika Albert, exposing her to enormous danger (133). Sebald took Andersch to task both for failing to mention these facts in his 1971 “Bildungsroman” Kirschen der Freiheit, and for stylizing his desertion from the army as a “Moment[s] existentieller Selbstbestimmung” (141). Sebald also noted that Andersch’s articles in the postwar journal Der Ruf, which presented itself as a vehicle of cultural renewal, were steeped in the tainted language of National Socialism (141). David Basker also draws attention to the fact that the writers around Der Ruf or the Gruppe 47 were by no means the writers the German public at this time were inclined to read. It was the writers of the “inner

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emigration” such as Stefan Andres, Werner Bergengruen, Hans Carossa, and Ernst Wiechert who were most successful (and certainly not the writers who had gone into exile). Nevertheless, Basker makes it clear that, in Koeppen’s case, his novels of the 1950s certainly were severely damning of restorative tendencies in West Germany, as much so as the works of Heinrich Böll. Of his critical credentials in West Germany there can be no doubt. David Basker’s chapter is followed by that of Hans-Joachim Hahn, whose focus is Rolf Hochhuth, one of West Germany’s most important dramatists. Like Basker, Hahn makes reference to continuities spanning the end of the war. Hahn diagnoses in the language of Hans Werner Richter, cofounder of the Gruppe 47 along with Andersch, a vocabulary typical of the German Youth Movement. For Hahn, the first decisive attempt to face the National Socialist past in West German literature came with Günter Grass’s Die Blechtrommel (1959), and Hochhuth’s play Der Stellvertreter (1963). Though even here, as Hahn indicates, the tendency was to use a distancing viewpoint, such as that of the threeyear-old Oskar Matzerath in Die Blechtrommel, who stops growing at that age and proceeds to view the world from an abnormal perspective — apparently confirmed by his admission at the age of thirty to a mental asylum. While the main emphasis of Hahn’s essay is Hochhuth’s play Effis Nacht of the late 1990s, a near-contemporary work set in 1943, he examines the reception of the Nazi period in a range of works from the “old” West Germany, the GDR (Christa Wolf’s Kindheitsmuster), and the 1990s (notably Schlink’s Der Vorleser).

Culture and Politics in East Germany After the war, according to Stuart Parkes in the present volume, the newly formed German Democratic Republic claimed that the enmity between “Geist” and “Macht” had been overcome. It did seem at first as if the commitment to socialism or at least anti-fascism as a core philosophy united the political leaders in the eastern zone and, subsequently, the GDR with the authors who chose to live there — chose being the operative word, given that many exile writers, not least Bertolt Brecht, Anna Seghers, and Arnold Zweig, elected to return to this part of Germany rather than the West (Alfred Döblin, one of those who did return to the West, moved to France in the early 1950s). But the proclaimed unity of “Geist” and “Macht” was soon only that: proclaimed. The tenets of socialist realism demanded a positive hero and a positive (in the sense of Marxist) line on historical development and historical out-

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come. Any literary deviation from these tenets was likely to fall foul of the all-pervasive censorship, and any expression of dissatisfaction with the GDR — especially in the West German media, which gave dissident GDR writers a public voice often denied them at home — likely to result in the author’s being labeled a “counter-revolutionary” by the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED). This is not to say that there were not periods when it seemed that the GDR authorities might adopt a more lenient line, notably after the death of Stalin on 5 March 1953, or after the building of the Berlin Wall, or in 1971. But these periods were short-lived and, in retrospect, were characterized as much by continuing cultural repression as by evidence of a possible “Tauwetter.” Any literary history of the GDR is bound to include amongst its “key dates” such heady moments as the first Bitterfeld Conference of April 1959, which marked the beginning of the attempt on the part of the SED to transform workers and farmers into literary workers and farmers: “Greif zur Feder, Kumpel, die sozialistische Nationalliteratur braucht dich!” ran the slogan of the conference (Rüther 1991: 86). But this was an attempt not so much to awaken the aesthetic skills of the workforce as to tap into what the SED felt might be its greater ideological reliability. The corollary of this was, of course, a loss of faith in the “professional” writers, who appeared too inclined to carp and question, especially as time wore on and socialism in practice became more associated with restrictions on freedom than with general emancipation. In the final analysis, most of the key dates in the putative literary history would be those that mark the staging-posts in the SED’s repression of artistic and mental freedom — notably, the trials of publisher Walter Janka and philosopher Wolfgang Harich in 1957 (Brodersen 1990); the Eleventh Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the SED in 1965, the most spectacular consequence of which was the banning of twelve DEFA films (Agde 1991); and the expatriation (de facto expulsion) of singersongwriter Wolf Biermann in 1976 (Broeker 1984). The history of the relationship between writer and state in the GDR, then, is one of increasing alienation, although many critical authors, such as Christa Wolf and Christoph Hein, retained their faith in socialism, and indeed their hopes that it might be practicable in the ideal form, to the end — for which, as made clear at the outset of this introduction, they were to be berated in 1990 and subsequently following unification. If there was one awkward author the SED had particular problems with, then it was Stefan Heym. Initially at least, Heym was a loyal supporter of the GDR’s politics, and he was sympathetic to the Soviet intervention in the East Berlin uprising of 1953. But he did not see eye to eye

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with the GDR on matters of cultural policy. The SED’s appropriation of Lukács’s concept of socialist realism was too dogmatic for Heym, who saw in it the danger of fossilization. As Reinhard Zachau shows in his chapter on the author, Heym was not so inclined to portray “positive socialist heroes,” and he did not shrink from seeking to place social conflict at the core of the plot. For Heym, Zachau argues, the integrity of the author’s position, his personal view of the truth, ranked above the demands of SED party politics. Honecker attacked Heym for this attitude at the Eleventh Plenary Session of the SED Central Committee in December 1965. During a meeting of 23 February 1966, the Sekretariat of the Central Committee accused Heym of pursuing an anti-socialist “Liberalisierungspolitik” and again complained at his “Anspruch auf eine Führungsrolle der Intelligenz” (quoted in Agde 1991: 167). Heym became almost a state enemy in the GDR, such that a law was named after him in 1979, the so-called “Lex Heym,” according to which GDR writers who published abroad without state permission — something Heym was not loathe to do — could be imprisoned for up to five years. Yet Heym was too well known internationally for the GDR to undertake any drastically punitive measures against him. According to Zachau, it was under Honecker in the 1970s that writers in the GDR began to distance themselves in their works most noticeably from the proclaimed values of socialist realism, and from any imminent hopes of utopia. As an example, Zachau cites Ulrich Plenzdorf’s Die neuen Leiden des jungen Werther (1972), which presents a negative role-model. Zachau also points to Christa Wolf, who introduced subversive figures from classical mythology such as Kassandra (Kassandra, 1983). Zachau’s views are echoed by David Robb in his contribution on the East German Liedertheater group Karls Enkel, active between 1978 and 1985. Indeed Robb claims that the revolutionary proletarian tradition of socialist realism began to lose its appeal and meaning in the 1960s, given that already by then the notion of a linear progress towards communist goals had fallen out of tune with personal experience. Robb also cites the example of Christa Wolf, who abandoned the tenets of socialist realism in favor of interior monologue and multiple time levels. As Robb sets out to demonstrate, a subjective appropriation and re-evaluation of history and tradition particularly marked the generation of creative artists who were “born into” the historical standstill in the late 1960s and 1970s. A most illuminating example of this is Karls Enkel, whose stage performances not only displayed a refined aesthetic of montage and disruption, but also represented a rejection of the official and conventional political song performance in the GDR. Robb even compares Karls Enkel to the dadaists, for whom the

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catastrophe of the First World War had shattered any illusion of progress and temporal continuity. In parallel to literary developments, Karls Enkel sought to reveal the contradictions and dissonances within a supposedly utopian society and political order.

Culture and Politics after Reunification Generally it is true that those authors and artists who remained in the GDR — even those whom the GDR would have been only too glad to see leave — never completely abandoned a sense of loyalty to the state. Thus even the critical works were not written against the GDR, but rather in the (naïve) hope that the SED might listen to calls for reform. To be a committed socialist, one might argue, is one thing, but to seriously imagine that the SED had anything to do with socialism quite another. One feels bound to say that Christoph Hein, Heiner Müller, Christa Wolf, and the other GDR writers who welcomed the 1989 revolution as a chance for the emergence of a truly socialist society were blind both to the capacity of the SED for self-regeneration and to the mood of the people. The best one can say in defense of their truly vitriolic dismissal of capitalist West Germany — Stefan Heym had fears that unification would lead to a “Viertes Reich” (1992: 250), while Christoph Hein equated it to being eaten up by “McDonald” (1990: 210) — is that their growing sense of disappointment at the failure of the revolution to produce a reinvigorated socialism clouded their judgment. But there is little to be said against their hopes and disappointments per se, and certainly nothing to be said against their continued, determined commitment to a better society. There is also nothing to be said against criticizing capitalism where this criticism does not take the form of propaganda. To a degree, Hein’s criticisms of capitalism in his postunification works — for instance in the novels Das Napoleon-Spiel (1993) and Willenbrock (2000), or the play Randow (1994) — have become more focused and relevant, if not subtle. Certainly, too, the accession of East Germany to West Germany means that united Germany comes in for criticism from what are now its “own” authors east of the former German-German border. It was certainly partly the fear of such “systemimmanent” criticism from writers who before 1990 clearly belonged to another state and were thus in a sense beyond the pale that triggered Greiner’s and Schirrmacher’s defensive call for a depoliticized literature. The end of the GDR has not necessarily brought about an end to idealistic visions of a better world. But for some it did represent a caesura of such proportions that its passing was experienced with a sense of

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mourning for the loss of what it was supposed to represent (even if it never did). In her investigation of the reactions of four women writers (Monika Maron, Helga Königsdorf, Brigitte Burmeister, and Ruth Rehmann) to the collapse of the GDR, Gisela Shaw explores surprising commonalities between some of them — surprising because Ruth Rehmann is a West German, while Monika Maron, although herself an East German, had been living in the West before the “Wende,” whereas Burmeister and Königsdorf were living in the GDR up to its demise; indeed Königsdorf was a founding member of the SED successor PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism). Despite Maron’s rejection of the Stalinist order and her often vicious attacks on the GDR, Shaw detects a sense of “Heimatlosigkeit” in her post-“Wende” novel Animal Triste (1996), a sense also expressed — albeit much more strongly — in Helga Königsdorf’s Gleich neben Afrika (1992). Ruth Rehmann’s Unterwegs in fremden Träumen (1993) demonstrates that a left-wing former Green Party parliamentary candidate (Rehmann stood in 1983) could also experience the end of the socialist experiment as a traumatic experience. Of the four, only Burmeister in Unter dem Namen Norma (1994) seems able to regard history as something to build on for the future. In the aforementioned works of Maron and Königsdorf, Shaw points by contrast to a lack of will to critically accept the course of history — to an unbridgeable gap between objective and subjective time in the face of the collapse of hope and utopia. The final contributions to this volume extend its focus to consider the impact of unification on other cultural phenomena apart from literature. One might tend to think of the changes to the now unified Berlin as primarily symbolical and political in nature: it is once again the capital of Germany, and the seat of government and parliament. But one should also be aware that, in keeping with this upgrading in status, changes have also been architectural; indeed the whole of Berlin since 1990 has resembled a massive building-site, and parts of it — not least the area around the Lehrter Stadtbahnhof, which is being transformed into a key railway station — still do. As a result of these changes in the city’s topography, accompanied by what has been referred to as “ballets of cranes,” Berlin has come to stand for the shifting, evolutionary, and unfinished — quite in contrast to the rather monolithic and historically static view some had of the city, which, they feared, would once more become the heart of German imperialism. Thus, as Ulrike Zitzlsperger illustrates in her examination of the new-look Berlin, the real political and cultural challenge for the city turned out to be that of an “Übergangszeit,” the transitional period between past and future, “no longer”

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and “not yet” — a period of open identities. There were no specific target groups, as everybody was affected by the process of repairing and recovery, the (re)birth of the “new Berlin.” Zitzlsperger discusses the manner in which politics attempted to use culture to adapt public spaces, with building-sites being presented not just as “Baustellen” but also as “Schaustellen” to encourage active participation in developments. She also considers literary responses to changes in the city, which came to serve as an ideal symbolic setting for the transitional and fluid. With the completion of building sites, Zitzlsperger notes, massive cultural programmes were adopted (literary reading marathons, Christo’s wrapping of the Reichstag, the continuing love-parade) to open up cultural space. But the period of transition will soon be over. Will a new cultural rhetoric take over, after all one of pompous self-assertion? The new building housing the Federal Chancellery would seem to indicate that things might develop in this direction — though the Berliners have already christened the Bundeskanzleramt the “Waschmaschine,” thereby frustrating any pretensions to grandeur. Moreover, the center of Berlin is also to be the site of a planned Holocaust Memorial, for which television presenter Lea Rosh and historian Eberhard Jäckel have been calling since the late 1980s, and the building of which according to a design by Peter Eisenman and Richard Serra was confirmed by Federal Parliament in June 1999. The Holocaust Memorial, ideally, will serve to anchor memory of National Socialism and the resulting awareness of the need to protect democratic rights in the heart of the Berlin Republic, countering any too-powerful drift towards that self-assertion referred to above. In her investigation of the political and public culture of memory in contemporary Germany, in which she considers the function of the Holocaust Memorial, Caroline Gay discusses the significance of what she terms the “dialectic of normality.” Ironically, according to Gay, Germany can only be sure of its own normality in the present, and be accepted as normal, by constantly nodding towards its own abnormality in the past, under National Socialism. Whether it is the issue of compensating forced laborers or the construction of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, actively responding to and critically remembering the Nazi past are cornerstones of German political and cultural identity. Yet, as Gay shows, the word “memory” is complicated, given that few in Germany today actually remember National Socialism: in fact what passes as memory is in large measure created by political and cultural gestures, and also, not least, by the media. Memory is open to manipulation.

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German Identity Today and the Nazi Past Far from receding from cultural and political discourse since 1990, when German unification appeared to have healed the wound of division resulting from the Cold War and the Second World War which preceded it, National Socialism has very much been a theme on a range of agendas, and there have been endless debates about the Nazi past (see Niven 2002). National Socialism has also been a strong theme in literature (see Schmitz 2001). To a considerable degree this can be explained by the fact that the end of the Cold War also meant an end to the ideological interests in East and West Germany which had blocked a balanced and comprehensive assessment of the Nazi past. Yet it also has to do with Germany’s need to make remembering this past compatible with the adoption of a more “future-oriented” role as the most powerful country in the European Union. Equally, in a broader sense it is part of a search for identity. Clearly, state-sanctioned socialism has had its day as a point of orientation; while western liberalism American-style has certainly not had its day, it is an import rather than an original creation. The search for “Germanness” cannot proceed without reference to Nazism, any more than the search for “normality” can. The problem is how this reference should be framed. Some fear that too great a preoccupation with German crime and guilt will lead to “negative nationalism,” arguably little better than the self-congratulatory nationalism that might result from playing up the more constructive parts of German history, or pointing full of pride to the achievements of “Vergangenheitsbewältigung.” The part which modes of remembering National Socialism play in determining identity formation is clearly crucial. More and more, the forms in which these modes are presented are cultural rather than historiographical. These modes can be filmic (Aimée und Jaguar), literary (Der Vorleser), or architectural (Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin). They can take the form of memorials: the Holocaust Memorial is only one example of a veritable plethora of memorials erected in Germany as a whole since the 1980s, but particularly since 1990. They can have the character of cultural events, “Happenings,” or of “art-in-progress,” as exemplified by Hans Haacke’s trough of earth in the Reichstag (discussed by Zitzlsperger). Even quasi-historical exhibitions such as the Wehrmacht exhibition (1995–ongoing) or Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners (1996) are successful in Germany because they are essentially cultural phenomena, given that they emphasize the way facts are communicated, prioritizing the effects of style, language, and aesthetics, rather than the facts themselves. If historiography investigates the facts,

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it is culture that elaborates the dialogue between present and past, seeking to define perspectives which can be “of use” in the public domain of a country seeking to redefine its identity. Martin Walser’s intervention in October 1998, when in a public speech he condemned the media obsession with the holocaust and the planned Holocaust Memorial and advocated the notion of individual conscience as opposed to one shaped by external triggers, was only apparently a rebellion against this broad cultural preoccupation (see Walser 1999). For what Walser was doing was staging a theatrical performance to millions of viewers in an attempt to define his perspective on how much “memory” is good for you. He was doing his bit to perpetuate the public discourse. Stuart Taberner begins his essay on German film by making the apparently daring statement that “Jews are all the rage since 1990.” But as Taberner points out, philo-Semitism is indeed something that needs, to a degree at least, to be regarded critically. Philo-Semitism is one strand in German identity-building which derives from the lessons of Nazism. Put this simply, it would seem to be positive. There is a question-mark, however, on the mold in which this derivation is cast. It may be, as Taberner indicates, that by identifying with Jewish agony under Hitler, Germans can generate an empathic sense of victimhood in which their own past agonies, notably at the hands of the Allies during the bombing-raids or when fleeing from the eastern territories towards the end of the war, could be understood as a “parallel experience.” Equally, philo-Semitism in the present context can mean emphasizing the positive aspects of German-Jewish history and playing down the holocaust. In either scenario, philo-Semitism would not be based on a critical sense of German responsibility for crime. Taberner examines the dubious face of philo-Semitism in Max Färberböck’s film Aimée und Jaguar (1998). In this film, as Taberner shows, the love between the two female protagonists is offered as an example of a German-Jewish symbiosis at the time of Nazism: it presents ordinary Germans as trapped by historical circumstances, and even has the Jewish heroine forgive her German lover for her selfishness and blindness. The relationship between the two women is “frozen” at the moment before their forced separation when Felice is sent to Theresienstadt. But while this film seeks to construct a counterweight to the holocaust, Dani Levi’s Meschugge (1999) is less manipulative, and indeed sets out to criticize tendencies to identify too closely with Jews. At the same time it argues against denying all positive historical links between Germans and Jews — a process that can lead to an unhistorical alienation and solipsism.

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Looking Forward in the New Millennium The impression one gains from Zitzlsperger, Gay, and Taberner is that culture is still very much engaged in seeking to shape opinions and responses in the public realm, despite the “Literaturstreit.” It has not abandoned its “sense of mission,” however this might be understood. Yet the insistence that it should abandon it has continued beyond the beginnings of the 1990s. Martin Walser’s 1998 speech referred to above was in essence a rejection of public enactments of conscience, of the tendency in other words of individuals or groups to act as spokespeople for the nation. His insistence on the intimate dialogue between the author and the language of his text (1999: 16–17) resulted from a fear that any author who cast himself or herself in the role of public rather than private intellectual was in danger of moral self-aggrandizement. How could such writers be sure they themselves could adhere to the lofty moral rules they postulated for others? A public intellectual, in other words, was also in danger of selfdelusion, even moral duplicity. Walser directed these suspicions not least at Jürgen Habermas, whom he ironically describes as “ein wirklich bedeutender Denker” (10). In the concluding chapter, John Marks examines the differences between the way in which French and German postwar intellectuals have viewed and view their roles. Marks’s essay makes it clear that the French philosophers — Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault — see themselves more as transmitters of concepts along the lines of the Nietzschean “arrow” or Theodor Adorno’s “message in a bottle”: hence Foucault’s notion of the “specific intellectual,” and Deleuze’s recommendation of the private thinker as opposed to the public professor. This French skepticism of any attempt to construct a civil forum or indeed seek to establish some form of consensus in the public sphere contrasts sharply with the ideas of Habermas. But it does accord with the ideas of Walser, who, as JanWerner Müller notes, has been termed “Foucault from Lake Constance” (Müller 2000: 152). This skepticism has also been echoed in very recent times by German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, who, as Marks shows, reintroduces the German dialogue with Nietzsche and Heidegger: the ideas of these philosophers had been regarded with distaste in postwar Germany, whereas in France they had met with more interest. Sloterdijk’s cynical view of humanism and the didactic principles that radiate from it lies at the heart of his speech and essay Regeln für den Menschenpark (1999). Implicitly, Sloterdijk’s suggestion that humanism may result in the “domestication” of the nation rather than its moral emancipation is also directed against Habermas. Certainly the public criticism to which

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Habermas has been subjected over the past few years, whether from Walser, Sloterdijk, Karl Heinz Bohrer, or others, has put him very much on the defensive. The implication that Habermas is not so much the advocate of a strong civil forum and a mutually agreed consensus as he is an intellectual and moral autocrat imposing his views on a tame and willing public realm is, of course, quite consonant with the interests of the New Right. The demise of the GDR has led generally to a renascence of totalitarianist theory. A symptom of this is the equation of left-liberal discourse with inflexible dogmatism. Developments in culture and thinking since 1990 must be regarded with caution. There is much to be said for liberating culture from a sense of duty to a political or moral agenda. But if liberation is to mean playing down German guilt for the National Socialist past, or is instrumentalized to attack left-wing and liberal positions and reject the legacy of humanism, then it is not liberation but repoliticization. While it is laudable that the Nazi past has not been dropped from the literary agenda, it has to be said that the handling of it, at first glance at least, gives rise for a degree of concern. Schlink’s novel Der Vorleser (1995) arguably seeks to make excuses for a concentration-camp guard by focusing on her illiteracy, of which she appears to be a victim. Günter Grass has suggested that, by portraying the theme of the East Prussian fugitives drowned on the “Wilhelm Gustloff” in his recent novella Im Krebsgang (2002), he was wresting the theme of the fate of German fugitives and expellees from the “right,” even from “right-wing radicals” (Sandmeyer et al. 2002). But that a traditionally left-wing author should choose as his literary focus the suffering of Germans was still a surprise. W. G. Sebald stirred up a controversy when he claimed in a 1998 essay that the theme of the bombing of German cities had been neglected in German literature (1999a); a novel by Gert Ledig that described this bombing (as graphically as could be imagined) was reprinted, proving Sebald wrong, but also then helping to intensify German self-pity (1999). One might also mention Dieter Forte’s Der Junge mit den blutigen Schuhen (1995), which focuses on the horrors of the Allied bombing of Düsseldorf. Sebald’s Die Ausgewanderten (1992) also appeared, albeit implicitly, to set side by side the melancholy experiences of German postwar emigrant Sebald with those of Jewish emigrés both during and before the Third Reich. It would then not be inaccurate to claim that some German authors have responded to the call for a depoliticized literature by understanding this as a brief to “open up” areas previously regarded as “politically incorrect”: notably German suffering. It must be said that this interest in German pain takes different forms. Grass’s Im Krebsgang provides a very differentiated, subtle, non-relativizing view of one example of this

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pain. Sebald’s Die Ausgewanderten is a more complicated case. The melancholia that runs throughout postulates a false equivalence, yet the empathy for Jewish suffering is undeniable. Dieter Forte’s novel Der Junge mit den blutigen Schuhen certainly appears to insist on the need to foreground German pain, while Schlink’s Der Vorleser and Hans-Ulrich Treichel’s Der Verlorene (1998) focus not so much on Germans under Nazism as on the experience of the second generation made to suffer, as it were, under the acquired traits or experiences of their elders. The end of the Cold War made possible a depoliticized adoption and exploration of the theme of German pain as trauma and traumatic legacy. Equally, in this age where the holocaust is rapidly becoming (some would say inappropriately) a metaphor for all manner of crimes, it would be censorious to insist that the Germans ignore the crimes committed against them. Yet the danger of relativization is considerable, and certainly the theme of German pain does predominate in recent German fiction about Nazism to a degree that might be considered excessive. The dangers inherent in this trend became all too clear with the appearance of Martin Walser’s new novel Tod eines Kritikers (2002). In Walser’s novel, a (probably though not unambiguously Jewish) literary critic, André Ehrl-König, is apparently murdered by a writer, Hans Lach, resentful of Ehrl-König’s condemnation of his, recent novel. It turns out that the critic has not been murdered at all, but this did not stop Frank Schirrmacher in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung refusing to run a prepublication serialization of the novel in that paper on the grounds that Walser’s novel, as Schirrmacher saw it, was an anti-Semitic “Schlüsselroman” directed against the German-Jewish critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki. In fact he published an open letter in the FAZ declaring this refusal to serialize the novel (2002: 49). There followed a bitter and entrenched debate in German newspapers on whether or not the novel was anti-Semitic, and, even if it were, whether Schirrmacher had the right to censure it as he had done prior to its publication. In a curious reversal, Schirrmacher, coinstigator of the “Literaturstreit,” found himself insisting on the need for literature to respect certain boundaries, whereas in 1990 it had seemed that he was committed rather to removing as many boundaries as possible. Ulrich Raulff, reacting to the inevitable Habermas-Bohrer dispute that ensued in the course of the debate, suggested that Germany had for years been seeking to abolish aesthetic criticism to replace it with “das politisch-moralische Urteil” and “Gesinnungskritik” (2002: 15). This claim is really quite false; in fact the opposite is the case. But it was certainly true that Schirrmacher appeared to have moved from being a critic of “Gesinnungsästhetik” to being its proponent.

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In a sense Schirrmacher may have felt moved to act as he did because a trend he helped to start had rather got out of control. Freeing literature from its anti-fascist moorings was supposed to produce a de-ideologized literature. With the appearance of Walser’s novel in 2002, it appeared that literature had not only freed itself from these moorings, but then, at least in some cases, had careered past aesthetic freedom towards the adoption of hitherto spurned extreme right-wing positions. Schirrmacher surely did not intend this extreme shift, whatever his flirtation with right-wing positions. Lack of space prevents an analysis of Walser’s novel here, but the charge of anti-Semitism is quite justified: clichéd images abound of the Jew as erotically obsessed to the point of permanent randiness, as powerobsessed, as a puppet and instrument of others without any personal substance, and as physically repellent. Significantly, too, it is the German — in the form of Hans Lach — who is presented as a victim of the Jew (as a result of the latter’s carping criticisms), rather than the other way round. Walser had already hinted in 1998 at the fact that, in terms of his relationship with Reich-Ranicki, he viewed himself as the Jew and Reich-Ranicki as the German (quoted in Niven 2002: 183). We must end then on a cautionary note. With Walser’s Tod eines Kritikers, the literary trend towards preoccupation with German victimhood has borne the kind of fruit one could have feared. For not only are Germans now viewed as victims of the same category as Jews, they are the victims of Jews. Jürgen Möllemann, FDP politician who recently made headlines by blaming antiSemitic affects on Jews themselves — notably Vice-President of the German-Jewish Council Michel Friedman — clearly shared this view of Germans as victims of awkward critical Jews. It is to be hoped that there will be no further “derailments” of the victim theme of the kind presented in Martin Walser’s Tod eines Kritikers.

Notes 1

For an overview, see Anz (1991); Deiritz and Krauss (1991); and Görtz et al. (1991: 228–314). 2 3 4 5

Reprinted in Deiritz and Krauss (1991: 139–45). For a good overview of German literature after unification, see Brockmann (1999). See also Kolinski and van der Will (1998: 4).

For good overviews of cultural production under National Socialism in literature, theater, music, and cinema, see Ketelsen (1992); London (2000); Levi (1999); and Reimer (2000) respectively.

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Works Cited Agde, Günter. Kahlschlag: Das 11. Plenum des ZK der SED 1965: Studien und Dokumente. Berlin: Aufbau, 1991. Anz, Thomas. “Es geht nicht um Christa Wolf.” Der Literaturstreit im vereinten Deutschland. Munich: spangenberg, 1991. Bance, Alan, ed. Weimar Germany: Writers and Politics. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1982. Brockmann, Stephen. Literature and German Unification. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. Brodersen, Ingke, ed. Der Prozeß gegen Walter Janka und andere. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1990. Broeker, Armin, ed. Exil. Die Ausbürgerung Wolf Biermanns. Cologne: Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 1984. Brussig, Thomas. Helden wie wir. Berlin: Volk und Welt, 1995. ———. Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee. Berlin: Volk und Welt, 1999. Corino, Karl, ed. Die Akte Kant: IM “Martin,” die Stasi und die Literatur in Ost und West. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1995. Deiritz, Karl, and Hannes Krauss. Der deutsch-deutsche Literaturstreit oder “Freunde, es spricht sich schlecht mit gebundener Zunge.” Hamburg and Zurich: Luchterhand, 1991. Emmerich, Wolfgang. Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR. Erweiterte Neuausgabe. Berlin: Aufbau, 2000. Forte, Dieter. Der Junge mit den blutigen Schuhen. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1995. Gedenkstätte Buchenwald, ed. Konzentrationslager Buchenwald. Göttingen: Wallstein, 1999. Görtz, Franz Josef, et al., eds. Deutsche Literatur 1990: Jahresüberblick. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1991. Grass, Günter. Im Krebsgang. Göttingen: Steidl, 2002. Gstrein, Norbert. Die Englischen Jahre. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999. Hahn, Hans-Joachim. German Thought and Culture from the Holy Roman Empire to the Present Day. Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 1995. Hein, Christoph. “Brief an den Rowohlt-Verlag, Reinbek: Berlin, am 20. 11. 89.” In Die fünfte Grundrechenart: Aufsätze und Reden 1987–1990. Frankfurt am Main: Luchterhand, 1990, 210.

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Heym, Stefan. “Rede auf der Demonstration am 9. Dezember.” In Einmischung: Gespräche, Reden, Essays. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1992, 249–50. Ketelsen, Uwe-K. Literatur und Drittes Reich. Schernfeld: SH-Verlag, 1992. Kolinsky, Eva, and Wilfried van der Will, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Modern German Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. Ledig, Gert. Vergeltung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999. Reprint of 1956 edition. Levi, Erik. Music in the Third Reich. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1994. London, John, ed. Theatre under the Nazis. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000. Mann, Thomas. “Warum ich nicht nach Deutschland zurückgehe.” In Stockholmer Gesamtausgabe, Reden und Aufsätze II. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1965, 645–54. Müller, Jan-Werner. Another Country: German Intellectuals, Unification and National Identity. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2000. Niven, Bill. Facing the Nazi Past. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Parkes, Stuart. Writers and Politics in West Germany. London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1986. Raulff, Ulrich. “Das Elend der Kritik: In den Reflexzonen der Gesinnung.” Süddeutsche Zeitung (15/16 June 2002): 15. Reimer, Robert, ed. Cultural History Through a National Socialist Lens: Essays on the Cinema of the Third Reich. Rochester, NY and Woodbridge: Camden House, 2000. Ritchie, J. M. German Literature under National Socialism. London and Sydney: Croom Helm, 1983. Rüther, Günther. “Greif zur Feder, Kumpel”: Schriftsteller, Literatur und Politik in der DDR 1949–1990. Düsseldorf: Droste, 1991. Sandmeyer, Peter, Gerda-Marie Schönfeld, and Volker Hinz (interviewers). “Eine Katastrophe aber kein Verbrechen.” Stern 8 (2002): 181–86. Schirrmacher, Frank. “Tod eines Kritikers. Der neue Roman von Martin Walser: Kein Vorabdruck in der F.A.Z.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (29 May 2002): 49. Schlant, Ernestine. The Language of Silence: West German Literature and the Holocaust. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. Schlink, Bernhard. Der Vorleser. Zurich: Diogenes, 1995. Schmitz, Helmut. German Culture and the Uncomfortable Past. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 1991. Sebald, W. G. Die Ausgewanderten. Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 1992.

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———. “Luftkrieg und Literatur: Züricher Vorlesungen.” In Luftkrieg und Literatur. Munich and Vienna: Hanser, 1999a, 9–120. ———. “Der Schriftsteller Alfred Andersch.” In Luftkrieg und Literatur. Munich and Vienna: Hanser, 1999b, 121–60. Sloterdijk, Peter. Regeln für den Menschenpark: ein Antwortschreiben zu Heideggers Brief über den Humanismus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999. Treichel, Hans-Ulrich. Der Verlorene. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1998. Vinke, Hermann. Akteneinsicht Christa Wolf: Zerrspiegel und Dialog. Hamburg: Luchterhand, 1993. Walser, Martin. “Erfahrungen beim Verfassen einer Sonntagsrede.” In Schirrmacher, Frank, ed. Die Walser-Bubis-Debatte: Eine Dokumentation. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999, 7–17. ———. Tod eines Kritikers. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2002. Walther, Joachim. “Sicherungsbereich Literatur.” Schriftsteller und Staatssicherheit in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik. Berlin: Christoph Links, 1996. Weyrauch, Wolfgang, ed. Tausend Gramm. Ein deutsches Bekenntnis in dreißig Geschichten aus dem Jahr 1949. Republished with a new introduction by Charles Schüddekopf. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1989. Wiechert, Ernst. Der Totenwald. Frankfurt am Main and Berlin: Ullstein, 1988. Wilson, Daniel. Das Goethe-Tabu. Protest und Menschenrechte im klassischen Weimar. Munich: DTV, 1999. Wolf, Christa. Was bleibt. Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau, 1990.

From Nature to Modernism: The Concept and Discourse of Culture in Its Development from the Nineteenth into the Twentieth Century Fritz Wefelmeyer

Culture and Society

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HE CONCEPT OF culture has undergone such a highly complex process of development that it would be impossible in a short essay to highlight all its different facets. However, it is possible to gain some impression of this development during the course of the nineteenth century by looking at certain distinctions and definitions that are familiar from today’s academic discourse. One such definition is that of culture as an independent part of a three-fold social order, an idea that has become established over the last twenty or thirty years in a large number of social theories. Although the terms used may vary, there is considerable agreement on the basic idea. For instance, Jürgen Habermas speaks of a society that consists of three subsystems: socio-cultural, political-administrative, and economic (1973). The sociologist Daniel Bell, from the more conservative camp, makes a similar differentiation (1976). Others have linked this three-fold system to further concepts, such as Johann Arnason’s concept of practice (1988) or Nicolas Perlas’s concept of globalization (2000). Moreover, it is worth noting that this division into three is also used outside professional sociology, for instance in the artistic and social theory of Josef Beuys. In all these definitions, the cultural sphere is regarded as distinct from 1 the political and economic spheres. This means that society is not viewed as a homogeneous entity characterized by a unified structure and organized according to universal principles. On the contrary, it is a complex of interconnected parts, and conflicts between these parts are inevitable as they develop at different speeds and not always simultaneously. In Bell’s words:

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Against the holistic view of society, I find it more useful to think of contemporary society . . . as three distinct realms, each of which is obedient to a different axial principle. I divide society, analytically, into the techno-economic structure, the polity, and the culture. These are not congruent with one another and have different rhythms of change; they follow different norms which legitimate different, and even contrasting, types of behavior. It is the discordances between these realms which are responsible for the various contradictions within society. (1976: 10)

A glance back at the nineteenth century reveals how very new this idea of a division into three actually is, where every part has an individual role to play. In fact, Jakob Burckhardt (1818–1897) was the first writer to develop such a division systematically (1978). He spoke of three “Potenzen,” that is, three historically influential powers, subdivided into state, religion, and culture. In the 1860s and 1870s, when this theory of the three “Potenzen” was developed, the economy clearly did not yet play a significant enough role in society for this Basle University profes2 sor to see it as another power. By contrast, religion still had sufficient importance for him to keep it separate and distinct from culture. This has now changed. Indeed, the literature of the social sciences shows that the merging of culture and religion is accepted in a number of theories and 3 approaches. Nonetheless, Jakob Burckhardt’s idea of a division into three is still of importance and was, as we have seen, a historical novelty: culture was neither an all-dominant modus of society nor a subordinated part of a system. A glance at what happened later suffices to show how, within thirty or forty years after Burckhardt, the legacy of the nineteenth century was realized in the twentieth. The concept of culture had become more flexible, and found its place in a network of other concepts. To take one example among many: Robert Musil’s novels, and also, more significantly, his theoretical essays on culture, illustrate this (1978). On the one hand, Musil (1880–1942) works with an older concept of culture, aimed at totality, in as far as culture is understood as the entirety of humankind’s technological, artistic, and social achievements. But, on the other hand, he also works with the concept of a conflict between culture and nature, which was familiar from the time of Burckhardt and an important theme in the nineteenth century, as well as with the opposition of culture and civilization, another nineteenth-century theme. However, Musil is really ahead of his time when, in the 1920s and 1930s, he presents culture as a part of society that stands in opposition to the economic and political spheres. Another example is Alfred Weber (1868–1958). Before and during the Weimar Republic he also tried to develop a social theory based

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on a three-fold model (1920/1). He distinguishes between society, civilization, and culture. In the progress of society and civilization it is human will power that dominates in the former and rational and intellectual capacities which are more important in the latter. Culture represents the “seelische” and emotional side of humanity, “seine eigentliche Wesenssphäre,” of which everything else in life is an expression, a form, a materialization, an image or a symbol. Culture does not develop in a linear way; as “Kulturbewegung” it is the history of forms of expression and the search for transcendence. It protects society and civilization from the meaninglessness of mere intellectualism and rationalism. The transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century can indeed be best understood as a battle of differentiation, in which the split from the political sphere is surely one of the most important, however dubious and even fatal the dividing line between the different spheres may be. Where, one might ask, does the political begin and the cultural end? In considering the first decades of the twentieth century, one must surely say that there are overlaps, adaptations, exchanges, and blurred boundaries. The National Socialists, for instance, did away with the difference between culture and politics. Others had the illusion that it was possible to keep politics out of culture. One thinks here of “Sportvereine” and sport movements including the establishment of the Olympic Games and the World Cup in football and of the Wandervogel movement that started at the turn of the century and also had a profound influence on contemporary youth culture, as well as attracting many adults. Other examples are artists’ communities such as the ones in Worpswede and in Dachau. It must not be forgotten, however, that conceptual differences are not readily invalidated either by political ideologies such as fascism or by the misjudgments of certain social and cultural groups. Nonetheless, concepts of culture must defend themselves against competing views of culture. The greatest challenge to the idea of culture as a subsystem comes from the idea of culture as an all-embracing totality. Such an idea was developed by Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) after the Enlightenment’s normative concept of culture had passed its zenith. Others, such as Georg Simmel, took up the same idea, as we shall see later. The theories of culture developed by Herder and Burckhardt were 4 not the only ones that contributed to the debate about culture. In fact, nowhere in Europe during the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century was there a greater wealth of cultural concepts than in German-speaking areas. Whatever one might think about the culture of this period and the debate about its meaning, one of its characteristics

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surely is the fact that never before had there been more talk, more writing, more debate about culture. The word “culture” was on everybody’s lips; there was no professional group, no newspaper, and no organization that did not reflect or ponder on culture. Culture: everybody knew something about it, everybody played a part in it, and everybody took pride in it. The word embellished the speeches that celebrated the turn of the century, it was brought up at assembly meetings if the tone needed to be lifted, and was regarded as essential at the unveiling of memorials. It was proudly flaunted whenever the “Kulturleben der Kulturmenschen, die Kulturmission der Kulturvölker, der Kulturfortschritt unseres Zeitalters” needed to be celebrated and praised, as Robert von Nostitz-Rieneck put it in his Das Problem der Kultur of 1888. And the author adds, with a sigh of exhaustion, alluding to Goethe’s essay on Shakespeare: “ueberall Kultur und kein Ende” (quoted in Seier 2000: 112). However, the term was not only understood positively, that is, as an affirmation of the glory and achievement of contemporary society. Criticism of culture was already an established form of discourse at the turn of the century. In addition, the elevation of the phenomenon to an academic discipline had begun with what has been known since the midnineteenth century as Kulturwissenschaft (cf. Seier 2000: 161–69).

The Meanings of “Culture” The situation was, however, very different at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Certainly, Herder provided the word and the concept with a permanent entry not only into the German language, but also into the academic and literary world, as the following two centuries would show. However, the word did not have a widespread impact. Many, including Moses Mendelsohn, saw it as belonging to the language of learned books, which to most people meant nothing. The word Kultur shares this fate, incidentally, with the words Aufklärung and Bildung. It is also worth noting here that the entry “Culture,” along with the entry “Civilisation,” is not included in Jean d’Alembert’s and Denis Diderot’s Encyclopédie, which appeared between 1751 and 1780. In relatively small circles, however, at the Weimar Musenhof, in Berlin’s enlightened circles, amongst the Romantics and their followers in Jena, the concept was taken up and discussed. Schiller and Kant accorded it recognition, and gave it a certain status in their work but, in comparison with Herder and Rousseau, they did not develop a full-fledged theory or history of cultural development. One cannot really speak of a philosophy of culture, in the strict sense of the word, even if literary critics try today to recon-

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struct such a philosophy from the scattered references in the works of Schiller and Kant (see Kopp 1974). Goethe developed no explicit cultural concept, and Hegel appears to have had no serious philosophical 5 interest in the concept of culture. Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that the use of the term, as well as the subject itself, began to arouse increasing interest. Already in 1793, the word “Kultur” appears in Johann Christoph Adelung’s Woerterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart. Three years later, J. G. Eichhorn’s Allgemeine Geschichte der Kultur was published, followed by Adelung’s Versuch einer Geschichte der Cultur des menschlichen Geschlechts. The last work marked the transition from a “Theorie der Menschheitsgeschichte” to a theory of cultural history, as initiated by Herder. Now, more clearly than before, the word Kultur denoted specific developments and characteristic customs, practices and forms of knowledge that were to be found in folklore and social traditions, in language, law, and art, but also in the technology and craft of a people or an ethnic group. What in the Enlightenment was still subsumed under the general title of the progress of the human race was now divided into the diversity of the different ways of life of individual groups or historical periods (Garber 1983: 76–97). This change also marks the birth of a new generation of cultural historians whose far-reaching influence can be detected well into the twentieth century. They have contributed decisively to the view that we hold so dear today, namely that the individuality of a people or group, along with the socially accepted and shared ways of life of a particular time, should be conceptualized in terms of culture. Jakob Burckhardt is surely the most influential here with his book Kultur der Renaissance in Italien, which appeared in 1860 and by 1919 was already in its twelfth edition. Another influential book was his Griechische Kulturgeschichte, which appeared from 1898 to 1902. Equally important was Victor Hehn with his study of Goethe’s Weimar and of Italy, and the noteworthy cultural history of salt. In 1880, the second edition of Karl von Prantl’s Geschichte des Geschmackes appeared, which used categories such as cultural epochs and cultural styles. Book titles such as Culturgeschichte des deutschen Volkes, which appeared from 1871 to 1876, or Kulturentwicklung Sueditaliens (1886) or Kulturgeschichte der Neuzeit from 1889, indicate the triumphal march of the new concept of culture. Such books on cultural history, however, also bring something foreign to the homes of German readers. Travel writing and reports on life in foreign parts of the world expand and complement the views that readers found in books on European cultural history. Naturally, the foreign is often perceived in a distorted way and with certain prejudices; but all the

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same, the new concept of culture creates a way of understanding the unfamiliar. In the same way, the historically foreign is for the first time perceived as the interconnectedness of a cultural way of life. Heinrich Schliemann’s excavations in Troy in the second half of the nineteenth century had brought into focus the material aspects of past cultures, such as the use of functional and cultish implements and art forms. The reading 6 public also took an interest in these excavations. Jakob Burckhardt brought new insights into foreign culture to complement this existing interest in archaeology. His Griechische Kulturgeschichte revealed a culture that could not be more alien. Hans-Georg Gadamer describes the effect of this book on the twentieth century as follows: Thanks to the efforts of Jakob Burckhardt and Friedrich Nietzsche, it is generally realized just how different the Greeks really were from those noble human beings whom Classicism offered for our emulation. . . . It was a new and more profound view of Greece in which the dark, brooding, subterranean presence of the Titans took their place alongside the higher forms of Olympian clarity and splendor. (1986: 76)

Since the turn of the century, it has been possible to observe a certain academic institutionalization of cultural history, as the establishment of yearbooks and archives demonstrates. But it must not be forgotten that at the beginning of the nineteenth century the Historische Schule had established itself, and, supported by documentation, concentrated on political history. Power struggles, major state operations, diplomatic intrigues, and military developments were here the fields of research, against which cultural history had nothing comparable to offer. As a result, cultural history was academically marginalized. In the nineteenth century, politics was the exclusive object of historical study, attracting teaching posts, professorial chairs, and doctoral students, whereas cultural history, with a few exceptions, remained excluded from universities (Burke 1991: 19). From here on, even at the beginning of the twentieth century, very little changed and this remains of no little importance for the relationship between politics and culture.

Civilization and Culture Of importance to the relationship between politics and culture and also to the relationship between culture and economics is the debate surrounding the difference between civilization and culture. Kant had already drawn attention to this difference:

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We are civilised to the point of excess in all kinds of social courtesies and proprieties. But we are still a long way from the point where we could consider ourselves morally mature. For while the idea of morality is indeed present in our culture, an application of this idea which only extends to the semblances of morality, as in love of honour and outward propriety, amounts merely to civilisation. (1970: 49)

The opposition between culture and civilization played an important role in German national self-definition well into the early twentieth century. What Kant called social courtesy and decency was for the Sturm und Drang movement the courtly manners and etiquette of rococo society. The French nobility embodied these manners, which in Germany were dismissed as empty, superfluous, and merely superficial or, at the very least, unsatisfactory. They were considered achievements of civilization, perhaps necessary, but certainly not sufficient in themselves. Culture, however, was understood in Germany as the true expression of feeling and self, as the individual’s inner values, the Bildung of its humanity, for which the individual had to struggle in a way that was true to its inner being. This final aspect must have played a large part in the choice of the word Kultur as, since Cicero, the word had expressed the ideas of cultivation and further education. The excesses, terror, and relentless bloodshed of the French Revolution taught the Germans how little mere manners and etiquette sufficed. These merely polished the outside and improved one’s comportment and conduct. They helped one to behave in polite society, but they did not affect one’s inner heart and feelings. Only through culture did individuals achieve full humanity. While in the English and French languages the word civilisation can be applied to political, economic, artistic, technological, and also — significantly — moral and religious questions and matters, in the German language it has to the present day remained confined to those areas in which is found, in the words of Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), “die Vermenschlichung der Völker in ihren äusseren Einrichtungen und Gebräuchen und der darauf Bezug habenden innren Gesinnung” (Humboldt 1963: 401). It was also Humboldt who used the term “Kultur” in order to describe that which transcends mere civility: for him modern culture included knowledge, art and “Bildung” which, by contrast with the Greeks and Romans, was a human right (402). While requiring education, culture is “etwas zugleich Höheres und mehr Innerliches, nämlich die Sinnesart, die sich aus der Erkenntnis und dem Gefühle des gesamten geistigen und sittlichen Strebens harmonisch auf die Empfindung und den Charakter ergiesst” (401). The concept of culture is here still strongly linked to the

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education of the individual; national differences play no part. At the most, it is different social forms, such as rococo society, that play a part in the question of how far a society has an interest in the individual’s education. With the rise of nationalism that changed. The civilization-culture opposition transformed itself into the opposition between France (or France and Great Britain) on one side and Germany on the other. Friedrich Theodor Vischer (1807–1887) praised the fact that Germany achieved a victory over France in 1871 and attributed this to its high-mindedness and spirited activity derived from its connection with Bildung and culture. In 1915, the first year of the First World War, Werner Sombart (1863–1941) played out a similar confrontation in his book Helden und Haendler: the current war was the heroic struggle of a culture in the face of a western civilization based on trade (Labrie 1994: 113). But as it is for Sombart, so it is also for others, as Bärbel Beßlich points out. Using examples such as Thomas Mann, Hermann Bahr, Rudolf Eucken, and Johann Plenge she argues that the First World War was in reality seen as a war on behalf of culture (Beßlich 2000). The war continued the debate about culture and civilization using different means, to adapt Clausewitz’s famous phrase. Germany was, in political terms, bogged down in feudal relationships until 1871 and these continued to exert considerable influence in the following decades. The idea that had been developed much earlier — of political activity and participation as part of culture — was increasingly rejected. In the second half of the nineteenth century very little remained of the critique of despotic power, which for Herder and Schiller was still linked to the concept of culture and which can also be found in Humboldt’s Ideen zu einem Versuche, die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staates zu bestimmen and in the liberalism of the 1840s. Education and culture, as it soon emerged, were supposed to seize the individual’s very core, and from there to lead to an engagement with society. The political dimension, however, was excluded from this engagement. Though still acknowledging the importance of German Idealism and Weimar’s cultural heritage, of Goethe, Schiller, Humboldt, and Kant, Hermann Baumgarten’s Der deutsche Liberalismus. Eine Selbstkritik of 1866 already shows the new trend that would become so influential later on right up until the time of the Nazis. Baumgarten wishes to combine culture with the authority and military strength of the state. The individual’s rights and emancipation lose importance (Bollenbeck 1994: 236). Politics as the individual’s fight for self-determination was increasingly excluded from the concept of culture. This exclusion became even more noticeable in the twentieth century, alongside a nationalistic gloss

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on the concept of culture that often criticized other nations as kulturlos. Germany became a “Kulturnation.” Already in 1918 Thomas Mann indicates in the title of his Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen that he defends a culture that differentiates itself from the political. For him, 8 politics is a matter for civilization, and therefore of concern to the West. Parliament and public set the agenda there and make decisions; the individual is tangled up not only in social roles and pressures, but also in conflicts and power struggles, which, although external to him or her, cannot be evaded. The addiction to material gain is ubiquitous. To this civilization of the West Thomas Mann opposes the culture of the community, in which role-play and struggle for status are of secondary importance. Here art and the metaphysical laws of the soul reign supreme. The former is connected to the vital forces of life and dominated by creative will. It leads individuals to the original powers and foundations of their existence. By contrast, Western civilization, especially England and France, has only what Thomas Mann calls literature to call upon, and this is limited to social criticism. Incidentally, with this form of literary social criticism Thomas Mann had his own brother, Heinrich Mann, in mind. Thomas Mann must have felt that his own use of the concepts of culture and civilization were justified because Heinrich Mann himself no longer made use of the term culture, speaking instead of “true” and “untrue” civilization.

Civilization, Culture and the City It was Voltaire who first linked the importance and growth of civilization to the establishment and expansion of town and city. It may therefore not come as a surprise that the culture-versus-civilization debate gains significance at a time when Germany experienced extreme urban growth, together with a strong increase in population. Manfred Vasold has described how until about 1820 there was little growth in most German towns, but some doubled their population between 1820 and 1850 or even, like Berlin, trebled it by 1880 (1996: 47–51). Some previously small towns — such as Dortmund, Duisburg, Essen, Remscheid — within a century grew forty times larger. At the time of the foundation of the Reich in 1871 about 35% of all Germans lived in towns with more than two thousand inhabitants; by 1890 it was 47% and by 1910, 60%. It was above all the larger towns which increased disproportionately in size; between 1871 and 1910 the population grew by about 50%, whereas in the larger towns this figure reached 300% (Vasold 1996: 47).

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Where, if not in the city, does the progress of civilization show itself? Here one was confronted with its achievements in all arenas, but here also, one could no longer escape from it. How much of this new civilization was culture and how much was not? One could not resolve this question without taking the city into account, especially the so-called 9 cities of modernism such as Berlin and Vienna. Attitudes toward the city quickly split into three camps. First, there were those who responded to it positively. This group included profiteers, job seekers, entrepreneurs, and artists, writers, and musicians looking for an outlet for their talents. Among the enthusiasts were people such as Frank Wedekind and Arno Holz, who wanted to benefit from the cultural experience the city had to offer. They sought an enrichment of their artistic sensibility. It is no coincidence that the term “Großstadtlyrik” was coined around the turn of the century. Second, there were the skeptics such as Rilke, who viewed the city experience from a critical distance, and more than once posed the same anxious question as Rilke’s Malte Laurids Brigge: “Ist es möglich, dass man trotz Erfindungen und Fortschritten, trotz Kultur, Religion und Weltweisheit an der Oberfläche des Lebens geblieben ist?” (quoted in Martini 1968: 494). And finally, there were those who decisively rejected the city, and who, like Friedrich Nietzsche, could manage only an outpouring of contempt and ridicule on the subject. For them, the city was the epitome of alienation and decadence. Urban growth and expansion not only bring the old village extra muros into the city itself, they also change fundamentally the relationship between city and environment as village economy and labor become modernized. Around the turn of the century there was already a reality of experience that may be interpreted as follows at the end of the twentieth century: The mode of village life, which had been formative for all cultures from the neolithic period until well into the nineteenth century, survives only in imitation form in developed countries. The decline of the peasantry has also revolutionized the traditional relationship between the urban and the rural. Today, more than 40 percent of the world’s population live in cities. . . . If New York, even its metropolitan center in Manhattan, is itself already no more than vaguely reminiscent of the great cities of the nineteenth century such as London or Paris, then the sprawling urban areas of Mexico City, Tokyo, Calcutta, Sao Paulo, Seoul, or Shanghai have finally exploded the familiar dimensions of “the city.” The hazy profiles of these megalopolises, where explosive growth is only two or three decades old, face us with a mode of experience that we are at a loss to comprehend. (Habermas 2001: 41)

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A “mode of experience that we are at a loss to comprehend”: this is how the experience of the city could have been described one hundred years previously. By contrast with earlier centuries, people’s experiences of the city at the end of nineteenth century break the conceptual mould, as the previous quotation shows. The fast growth of the city and its multicolored and bewildering mixture of civilization and culture, of industry, technology, mass rallies, new art forms, and new means of communication did not allow contemporaries to comprehend their experiences according to the model of past aesthetics and philosophies. This is partly due to the fact that the form of experience changes. In the age of modernism it becomes increasingly difficult to let experience fall into a pattern by repeating it. Such patterning had been possible for thousands of years with the experience of nature and its seasons through worship, ritual, and the celebration of festivals. Not so in the city, which constantly produces new styles and fashions, alongside new forms of entertainment and leisure. Billboards, newspapers, exhibitions, and tradeshows are characteristic of the ever-changing life in the city. Just as the means of transport are accelerated so too is the flow of new images, forms of music, tastes and smells. The danger arises that city dwellers are unable to grasp and make their own what they have experienced. Instead they may suffer, in the popular words at the time, nervous stimulation and nervous exhaustion, eventually even nervous breakdown. It is not for nothing that critics speak of the “Zeitalter der Nervösität” (Asendorf 1989: 58). At any rate, alienation is the result. Georg Simmel (1858– 1918), philosopher, sociologist, and contemporary commentator on modern life and change, called this the tragedy of modern culture: the cultural product does not touch and enrich the inner life of the individual. There is too much that can be culturally experienced, too much of it is inferior and too much is just distracting. There is too little time and strength of mind to cope with it. Simmel’s diagnosis is still informed by the concept of culture that Herder, Humboldt, and others had developed in the previous century, as mentioned before. His idea of culture as a means of affecting and profoundly shaping the inner life of the individual is unthinkable without the older concept. Yet, Simmel’s analysis identifies an obstacle to the task of culture that previous generations did not have to face: the constant change and economic overproduction of cultural goods. The beginning of the century is also the time when a new intellectual sensitivity was awakened and new concepts of culture were being formed, gained from the unsettling, often unnerving, but always stimulating experience of life in the city. Simmel’s book Philosophische Kultur, a

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collection of essays, is a point in case. This collection, which appeared in 1911, reveals a sharp mind and a keen observer highly sensitive to city life in all its forms. Simmel’s interests were indeed broad: he wrote on high and popular culture in all their varieties, from Michelangelo and Rodin, eating habits and life styles, adventure and travel, prostitution and money, to adornment and fashion, gender relationships, and everyday 10 items of use. His essays marked the establishment of a form of reasoning that soon became known as Kulturräsonnement: a mixture of sociology, philosophical speculation, and art and literary criticism. The same sensitivity can be found in a more literary form in Robert Musil’s novel Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, and is further developed in Walter Benjamin’s notions of the “flâneur,” the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction and the “Passage” (Benjamin 1983). Simmel’s approach to culture had a far-reaching influence. His lectures and seminars were attended by, among other well-known figures, Georg Lukács, Ernst Bloch, and Ernst Cassirer, who all became famous later on and who all learned from him. Siegfried Kracauer, the early Max Horkheimer with his “Dämmerung,” and Theodor W. Adorno with his “Minima Moralia” stand in the same intellectual tradition. Simmel was the first to link Karl Marx’s concept of the fetishistic character of economic goods in the age of commodity production to the analysis of culture in modern society (1983: 211). This link would prove very productive in German cultural criticism, especially in the work of Adorno, but also in the writings of Ernst Bloch; Simmel was in many ways typical of a new intellectual sensitivity to modern culture and its discontents.

Culture as Compensation It is obvious that the changes in one’s social environment, together with rapid technological and industrial changes, could bring with them insecurity and a lack of orientation. A number of writers therefore called upon culture as the one authority that could represent a much needed counterweight and remedy. The idea of compensation was born here, long before Odo Marquard, Hermann Lübbe, and others in the 1970s developed their theories 11 on the compensatory character of modern culture. In fact, compensation theories have a long tradition in German twentieth-century thought and have more than once caused politicians to seek out culture as a means of ensuring stability and cohesion (Habermas 1988: 153). The situation at the beginning of the twentieth century was of course different from the one at the end. Marquard and Lübbe argue for a culture that offers a small and comfortable haven for the overstimulated and overburdened minds of those

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who have accepted the unstoppable technological and industrial modernization that dominates modern society. Culture creates “reserves” in which emotional needs as well as needs for symbolic action and representation are satisfied. However, no attempts are made in these “culture reserves” to shape and direct the process of modernization through, for example, political institutions. Instead, these enclaves ensure the cultivation of traditions and the protection of forms of sense-making in both individual and social life. Culture is therefore an epiphenomenon of technological rationalization and modernization and should not be confused with cultural criticism which challenges the hegemonic demands of industrial and capitalist society. By contrast, in Germany before the First World War and in the Weimar Republic more was expected of culture, as the cultural theories of Georg Simmel und Alfred Weber demonstrate. Here too culture creates a counterweight or balance, but this time compensation involves the very fabric of society. It also extends into the domain of human anthropology and includes criticism of modern civilization. This can be seen particularly clearly in Simmel’s philosophy of culture. He distinguishes between the individual and the surrounding world of cultural objects which as “objektiv geistige Erzeugnisse” are produced by single individuals or a group of individuals through division of labor. The reception, internal processing, adaptation, and accommodation of these cultural objects represent a continuous process of the individual’s self-perfection. The path taken by the individual leads from itself as “geschlossene Einheit” to the world of plentiful cultural objects as “entfaltete Vielheit” back to the individual as “entfaltete Einheit.” According to Simmel, the individual depends on the objects that have been created for his or her own development. But these cultural objects, which could also be described as the result of the process of civilization and modernization, are not in themselves already culture. Culture is the process whereby individuals make the cultural objects their own and grow in perfection. As compensation for individuals who give themselves up to the world of cultural objects comes the opportunity of personal development and growth. In Simmel’s own words, which very much reflects the language of the time, he cites as an example the influence of Wilhelm Dilthey’s “Lebensphilosophie”: Kunst und Sitte, Wissenschaft und zweckgeformte Gegenstände, Religion und Recht, Technik und gesellschaftliche Normen — sind Stationen, über die das Subjekt gehen muss, um den besonderen Eigenwert, der seine Kultur heißt, zu gewinnen. Es muß diese in sich einbeziehen, aber es muß sie auch in sich einbeziehen, darf sie nicht einfach als objektive Werte bestehen lassen. Es ist das Paradoxon der

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Kultur, daß das subjektive Leben, das wir in seinem kontinuierlichen Strome fühlen, und das von sich aus auf seine innere Vollendung drängt, diese Vollendung, von der Idee der Kultur aus gesehen, gar nicht aus sich heraus erreichen kann, sondern nur über jene, ihm jetzt ganz formfremd gewordenen, zu selbstgenugsamer Abgeschlossenheit kristallisierten Gebilde. Kultur entsteht [. . .] indem zwei Elemente zusammenkommen, deren keines sie für sich enthält: die subjektive Seele und das objektiv geistige Erzeugnis. (2000: 186)

What is striking about Simmel’s concept of culture is that, by contrast with Jakob Burckhardt’s three-fold model of society, he develops a “totalitätsorientierten Kulturbegriff,” to use Andreas Reckwitz’s words (2000: 72–79). Culture represents both the world of man-made objects, institutions, forms of knowledge, and behavior, and the individual who seeks to appropriate all of these. As a result, culture does not have a political dimension of its own. The political is just one of the many forms that culture can take and is subsumed under the concept of culture. However, a specific political dimension is also lacking in what Simmel calls the tragedy of modern culture, as mentioned before. Tragic is the word Simmel uses to describe the fact that human cultural manifestations, because of how they develop or how they become specialized and differentiated, follow “einer eigenen Sachlogik” that is in conflict with their cultural task, namely the development of the individual. Relevant here are overproduction, division of labor, the production of goods creating new needs in the individual, or the creation of cultural objects for their own sake, along with a number of other developments. What was created by the individual for the sake of its development now turns 12 against it and its development. That is the real tragedy. With this idea of tragedy Simmel takes Marx’s concept of alienation one step further. The “fetishistic character” of economic goods in capitalist society is only a specific instance of the general fate of culture (Simmel 1983: 211–13). The critique of political economy is turned into cultural criticism (Bollenbeck 1994: 258). Alfred Weber comes to the same conclusion as Simmel but from a different perspective. For him too the progress of civilization must be complemented by culture. The rationality and intellectualism which developed in Western civilization are incapable of giving meaning and value to life: this can only be achieved by the individual’s powers of soul. As social life is conceived by analogy to the human anthropology which uses the three essential concepts of will, spirit, and soul, the neglect of culture, as representative of the soul, leads to a profound crisis where both individuals and society lose their equilibrium (Weber 1920/1: 1–49).

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Culture and Nature One must not fail to recognize that in the transition to the twentieth century there were clear breaks and discontinuities in the understanding of culture. Nowhere is that clearer than in the relationship between culture and nature. In Germany, the concept of nature has often been included in the concept of culture. Kant spoke of a natural plan, to which the development of the human species was subject. The aim of development was “a state with a cosmopolitan purpose.” To this is connected the idea, in the Kritik der Urteilskraft, that with teleological judgments, we “can regard it as a favor of nature that by means of the exhibition of so many beautiful shapes it would promote culture” (Guyer 2000: 252). For Herder it is God’s imprint in nature, that can be deciphered from the development of culture, as if from a book (1967: 72). Goethe saw nature as culture’s primordial image and model. For him the development of culture should be inspired by the experience of nature. Genius was a bridge between nature and culture in that it created the latter according to the rules of the former (1967: 365–547). However, this view of nature was abandoned during the course of the nineteenth century. It resurfaced, albeit in a greatly modified form, in the evolutionary theories of Darwin and Theodor Haeckel. In his Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen Burckhardt talks of a break between nature and history. For him, culture is the playing field of hybrids, while nature deals with species. And Nietzsche’s aphorism that we enjoy the experience of being in nature so much because it has no opinion about us makes fun of a culture which is only bearable in nature. Under the impact of the strongly growing influence of the natural sciences, Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) felt it necessary to clearly differentiate the methodologies of Geisteswissenschaft from natural science (1914). These two forms of knowledge were fundamentally distinct because of the difference between “erklären” and “verstehen,” the latter being the dominant mode in the humanities. Thereby, from the philosophical point of view, the division between nature and culture was cemented in methodology. Several attempts to bring about a convergence of culture and nature, using Goethe’s understanding of the natural sciences, were unsuccessful. Goetheanism continued as a cultural heritage, but in the natural sciences became increasingly marginalized (Schad 2001). The same is true of the medicine of the Romantic period. It is only in folk medicine, homeopathy, and naturopathy that some vestiges survive (see Wiesing 1995, and Harrington 1996). The concept of culture, freed from an empathic view of nature, could then be taken up by the social Darwinists and imperialists and filled

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with ideas of struggle for survival, cultural inferiority, and racial differentiation (Bublitz 2000; Koch 1973). The path to fascism was prepared.

Notes 1

For further examples, see Reckwitz (2000: 79–84).

2

Burckhardt seems to have been aware of his shortcomings in this respect (see Ganz 1997: 340).

3

Compare Habermas (1973); Bell (1976); Reckwitz (2000); and Parsons (1961).

4

For an overview, see Perpeet (1984) and Seier (2000).

5

See Gil (1992: 45–49). The word “Kultur” is not even listed in the Hegel-Lexikon (Glockner 1957). See also Liebrucks (1984). 6

See for example the magazine Die Gartenlaube (Zimmermann 1967: 161).

7

By contrast with the Enlightenment, however, culture is valued more highly than civilization because the former is connected to art, knowledge, and the sciences (see Bollenbeck 1994: 145 and 344, footnote 163). 8

See also his Gedanken im Kriege (1914), in which he argues that culture has always been the preferred word in Germany because of its purely human (“rein menschlichen”) content, whereas civilization has political connotations. Here, the influence of Humboldt is very obvious (Mann 1986: 30). 9

See Malcolm Bradbury, “The Cities of Modernism”; James McFarlane, “Berlin and the Rise of Modernism 1886–96”; and Franz Kuna, “Vienna and Prague 1890– 1928.” In Bradbury and McFarlane (1981: 96–133). 10

Despite the widely accepted distinction between high and popular culture in Germany at the time, it was not considered unacceptable for professors of philosophy or economics to write about popular culture including fashion as the cases of Theodor Vischer and Werner Sombart prove. See their contributions in Bovenschen (1986). 11

See Marquard (1986), and also Bollenbeck (1994: 311).

12

See also “The Crisis of Culture” (Lawrence 1976: 253–66).

Works Cited Arnason, Johann P. Praxis und Interpretation: Sozialphilosophische Studien. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988. Asendorf, Christoph. Ströme und Strahlen. Das langsame Verschwinden der Materie um 1900. Berlin: Anabas, 1989. Bell, Daniel. The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. London: Heinemann, 1976. Benjamin, Walter. Das Passagen-Werk. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983. Beßlich, Bärbel. Wege in den “Kulturkrieg”: Zivilisationskritik in Deutschland 1890–1914. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2000.

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Bollenbeck, Georg. Bildung und Kultur: Glanz und Elend eines Deutungsmusters. Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1994. Bovenschen, Sylvia, ed. Die Listen der Mode. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986. Brackert, Helmut, and Fritz Wefelmeyer, eds. Naturplan und Verfallskritik. Zu Begriff und Geschichte der Kultur. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984. Bradbury, Malcolm, and James McFarlane, eds. Modernism 1890–1920. London: Penguin, 1981. Bublitz, Hannelore. “Die Gesellschaftsordnung unterliegt dem Walten der Naturgesetze: Sozialdarwinismus als Schnittstelle der Rationalisierung von Arbeit, Bevölkerungspolitik und Sexualität.” In Der Gesellschaftskörper. Zur Neuordnung von Kultur und Geschlecht um 1900, edited by Hannelore Bublitz, Christine Hanke, and Andrea Seier. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2000. Burckhardt, Jakob. Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen: Ueber geschichtliches Studium. Munich: dtv, 1978. Burke, Peter. “Reflections on the Origins of Cultural History.” In Interpretation and Cultural History, ed. Joan H. Pittock and Andrew Wear. London: Macmillan, 1991, 5–25. Dilthey, Wilhelm. Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 5 and 7. Leipzig: Teubner, 1914. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986. Ganz, Peter. “Jakob Burckhardt und die Kulturgeschichte.” In Der fremdgewordene Text. Festschrift für Helmut Brackert zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Sylvia Bovenschen, et al. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1997, 334–47. Garber, Jörn. “Von der Menschheitsgeschichte zur Kulturgeschichte.” In Kultur zwischen Bürgertum und Volk: Zum geschichtstheoretischen Kulturbegriff der deutschen Spätaufklärung, ed. Jutta Held. Berlin: Argument, 1983, 76–97. Gil, Thomas. Kulturtheorie: Ein Grundmodell praktischer Philosophie. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1992, 45–49. Glockner, Hermann, ed. Hegel-Lexikon. Stuttgart: Kröner, 1957. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. “Maximen und Reflexionen.” In Goethes Werke: Hamburger Ausgabe in vierzehn Bänden. Hamburg: Christian Wegner, 1967. 365–547. Guyer, Paul, ed. Critique of the Power of Judgement. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Habermas, Jürgen. “Learning from Catastrophe? A Look Back at the Short Twentieth Century.” In The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001.

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———. Legitimationsprobleme im Spätkapitalismus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973. ———. “Die neue Intimität zwischen Politik und Kultur. Thesen zur Aufklärung in Deutschland.” Merkur. Deutsche Zeitschrift für europäisches Denken 2:468 (February 1988): 150–55. Harrington, Anne. Reenchanted Science: Holism in German Culture from Wilhelm II To Hitler. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1996. Herder, Johann Gottfried. Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1967. Humboldt, Wilhelm von. “Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaus und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts.” In Werke in fünf Bänden. Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1963, 368–756. Kant, Immanuel. “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose.” In Kant’s Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1970, 41–53. Koch, Hannsjoachim W. Der Sozialdarwinismus: Seine Genese und sein Einfluß auf das imperialistische Denken. Munich: Beck, 1973. Kopp, Bernhard. Beiträge zur Kulturphilosophie der deutschen Klassik. Eine Untersuchung im Zusammenhang des Bedeutungswandels des Wortes “Kultur.” Meisenheim and Glan: Hain, 1974. Labrie, Arnold. “Kultur and Zivilisation in Germany during the Nineteenth Century.” In German Reflections: Yearbook of European Studies, 7, ed. Joep Leerssen and Menno Spiering. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1994, 95–120. Lawrence, Peter, ed. Georg Simmel: Sociologist and European. Sunbury: Nelson, 1976. Liebrucks, Bruno. “Gibt es eine Philosophie der Kultur bei Hegel?” In Naturplan und Verfallskritik. Zu Begriff und Geschichte der Kultur, ed. Helmut Brackert and Fritz Wefelmeyer. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984, 148–79. Lübbe, Hermann. “Geschichtsinteresse in einer dynamischen Zivilisation.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 18 March 1987. Mann, Thomas. Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (Frankfurter Ausgabe). Vol. 13. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1983. ———. “Gedanken im Kriege.” In Essays. Band II: Politische Reden und Schriften. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1986, 23–37. Marquard, Odo. Apologie des Zufälligen. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1986. Martini, Fritz. Deutsche Literaturgeschichte von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart. Stuttgart: Kröner, 1968. Musil, Robert. Gesammelte Werke in neun Bänden. Vol. 8. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1978.

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Parsons, Talcott. “An Outline of the Social System.” In Theories of Society. Foundations of Modern Sociological Theory. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1961, 30–79. Perlas, Nicolas. Shaping Globalisation: Civil Society, Cultural Power and Threefolding. Manila: CADI, and New York: Globe Net3, 2000. Perpeet, Wilhelm. “Kulturphilosophie um die Jahrhundertwende.” In Naturplan und Verfallskritik. Zu Begriff und Geschichte der Kultur, ed. Helmut Brackert and Fritz Wefelmeyer. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984, 364–408. Reckwitz, Andreas. Die Transformation der Kulturtheorien: Zur Entwicklung eines Theorieprogramms. Göttingen: Velbrück, 2000. Schad, Wolfgang. “Was ist Goetheanismus?” In Tycho de Brahe-Jahrbuch für Goetheanismus. Niefern-Öschelbronn: Tycho de Brahe, 2001, 23–66. Seier, Andrea. “Überall Cultur und kein Ende. Zur diskursiven Konstitution von Kultur um 1900.” In Der Gesellschaftskörper. Zur Neuordnung von Kultur und Geschlecht um 1900, ed. Hannelore Bublitz, Christine Hanke, and Andrea Seier. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2000, 112–78. Simmel, Georg. “Der Begriff und die Tragödie der Kultur.” In Philosophische Kultur: Ueber das Abenteuer, die Geschlechter und die Krise der Moderne. Gesammelte Essais. Berlin: Wagenbach, 1983. Vasold, Manfred. “Städtewachstum und Stadterneuerung.” In Das 19. Jahrhundert. Ein Lesebuch zur deutschen Geschichte 1815–1918, ed. Wolfgang Piereth. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1996, 47–51. Weber, Alfred. “Prinzipielles zur Kultursoziologie.” Archiv für Sozialwissenschaften und Sozialpolitik (1920/1): 1–49. Wiesing, Urban. Kunst oder Wissenschaft? Konzeptionen der Medizin in der deutschen Romantik. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1995. Zimmermann, Magdalene. Die Gartenlaube als Dokument ihrer Zeit. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1967, 114–15.

The German “Geist und Macht” Dichotomy: Just a Game of Red Indians? Stuart Parkes

A Short History of “Geist” and “Macht”

I

on France Vom Glück, Franzose zu sein, the popular journalist and author Ulrich Wickert makes the following claim:

N HIS BOOK

Die Vorstellung — Helmut Kohl oder Helmut Schmidt — käme auf die Idee, einen Roman, gar über Liebe (!) zu schreiben, würde das deutsche Publikum verwirren. Selbst Gerhard Schröder nähme das deutsche Volk einen literarischen Ausbruch — leider nicht ab. (1999: 200)

While it is tempting to speculate on why Wickert should ascribe greater literary potential to the current chancellor than his two predecessors, this is not the issue here. What is interesting is the assumption that the worlds of literature and politics are entirely distinct for the German people — and also the other assumption, not included in the passage quoted but already latent in the location of the statement within a book on France, that this is not the case with Germany’s neighbor. In fact, to underline the point, Wickert goes on to quote the response attributed to General de Gaulle at the time of the May 1968 events when it was suggested to him that Jean-Paul Sartre should be arrested: namely “Voltaire verhaftet man nicht” (201). It is not particularly difficult to find similar expressions of this view of the relationship between the world of “Geist,” from which literature, or at least serious literature, emanates, and that of “Macht,” the exercise of which is a major part of political activity. There is the well-known comment of Goethe’s which dates from 1797 and includes skepticism about the hopes of achieving German unity that were current at the time: “Deutschland, aber wo liegt es? Ich weiß das Land nicht zu finden./ Wo das gelehrte beginnt, hört das politische auf” (quoted in Buch 1978: 30). Another key figure in the debate is undoubtedly Heinrich Mann, whose work is suffused with statements that contrast the two realms,

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with “Geist” invariably seen in a most positive light and “Macht” viewed with deep distrust. Nothing could be much clearer than the juxtaposition contained in the 1910 essay “Geist und Tat.” Here “Geist” is contrasted with its “Todfeind, die Macht” (1960: 14). A closer look at the text, however, raises a number of questions that should not be overlooked. Not least, there is the question of what is meant by “Geist.” Initially, it seems to mean “spirit” as much as if not more than intellect, as in this comment on the ephemeral nature of tyranny: Any triumph of tyranny can only be temporary “vor dem Geist, der damals aufleuchtete” (10). The word “damals” refers to the time of the French Revolution. Much of the essay is, in fact, a eulogy of France, the country where, according to Mann, unlike Germany, “Geist,” which now seems to mean the world of the intellect, has flourished. Wickert then, in contrasting the two countries, is picking up on a long tradition. Mann is now presenting “Geist,” it would appear, as a positive progressive force, as the following comment on the role of the writer confirms: “Vom Geist ist ihm die Würde des Menschen auferlegt” (14). However, a few lines later, Mann writes: “Gerade er [der Geist, SP] aber wirkt in Deutschland seit Jahrzehnten für die Beschönigung des Ungeistigen” (14). It is hard to see any logic in this argument, unless it is accepted that the term “Geist” is now being used with a different meaning. At this point, it would seem to refer to the world of learning or letters, in other words forces that should oppose “das Ungeistige,” a term which includes, one assumes, the world of politics or at least refers to the political practice of the time. In later essays, Mann’s glorification of “Geist” reaches what might be considered absurd proportions, as in the following comment from a 1931 speech: “Wir haben immer und zu allen Zeiten behauptet, das höchste, ja das wahre Leben sei das des Geistes” (1994: 301). Not only is the style quasi-religious, with “Geist” appearing to be almost akin to the Christian Holy Spirit. In this particular context it is also being contrasted with the state, whose works are dismissed as “gleichgültig” alongside those of the intellect. It only needs to be pointed out that two years after these words were spoken forces came to power whose actions can hardly be described by this adjective. At the same time, National Socialist ideology, with its stress on physical strength at the expense of the intellect, does underline the possibility of the kind of dichotomy between intellect and power that Mann is referring to. Mann’s skepticism towards the world of power is expressed nowhere more effectively than in his 1918 novel Der Untertan. Its main character, Diederich Heßling, is the incarnation of all that Mann dislikes: submission to state power combined with ruthless authoritarianism towards

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those of lower status. Heßling is, as the title suggests, the perfect “subject” of the Second Empire, whose veneration for the Kaiser knows no bounds. On one occasion, he finds himself at the Brandenburg Gate face to face with his ruler, who significantly towers high above him on his horse. His thoughts are expressed in the form of an interior monologue: Auf dem Pferd dort, unter dem Tor der siegreichen Einmärsche und mit Zügen, steiern und blitzend, ritt die Macht! Die Macht, die über uns hingeht und deren Hufe wir küssen! Die über Hunger, Trotz und Hohn hingeht! Gegen die wir nichts können, weil wir alle sie lieben! Die wir im Blut haben, weil wir die Unterwerfung darin haben! (1993: 57)

In such contexts the fictional form of satire shows itself to be a better vehicle for lampooning the world of power than the essays with their at times self-righteous tone. If one were to look for an expression of views totally opposed to those of Mann, then it would appear to lie in the 1988 essay by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, “Macht und Geist: Ein deutsches Indianerspiel,” the title of which has been used as the starting point of this essay (207). As this title implies, Enzensberger is not championing one side, but rather suggesting that the whole conflict is not to be taken particularly seriously. The subject is immediately dismissed as “eine urdeutsche Spezialität, unergiebig wie das Sauerkraut oder der Karneval zu Mainz” (207), a simile that in itself is an example, albeit mild, of German intellectuals’ tendency to decry what happens in their own country. Enzensberger’s polemic continues in the same scornful tones. He recalls the insults heaped on writers in the postwar years, for example the infamous comparison of the Gruppe 47 with the Nazi Reichsschrifttumskammer made by the CDU politician Hermann-Josef Dufhues in 1963, and Chancellor Erhard’s pincher insult during the 1965 Federal election campaign. What at the time caused major scandals are dismissed by Enzensberger as the tiffs of a “Rentner-Ehepaar, das seit Menschengedanken miteinander gestritten hat, und dem sein Hader zur lieben Gewohnheit geworden ist” (212). Just as such marital conflicts become part of a routine between two people, who in fact over the years have come to resemble each other more and more, the intellect and power dichotomy may well hide similarities between the two camps. Both live off the public: “Intellektuelle und Künstler nehmen Stipendien, Preise, Subventionen in Empfang; Politiker sind an Diäten, Aufwandsentschädigungen und Spenden gewöhnt” (213). Enzensberger’s conclusion is typically mischievous. He propounds a utopia (or dystopia), which he calls the “dissipative Gesellschaft” (219).

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Within its framework all kinds of social groups, but especially politicians and intellectuals, will be able to express their views, creating what he terms a “großen Wanderzirkus” (219). If, within the world of literature, this recalls Kafka’s Der Verschollene, where the “Naturtheater von Oklahoma” offered room for everyone, it might also not be so far removed from the concept of the “Erlebnisgesellschaft,” the term coined by Gerhard Schulze to describe contemporary society (Schulze 1992). The only comfort would then be that, at least in the cases of the Millennium Dome and Expo 2000, many people turned their back on the entertainment on offer.

“Geist” and “Macht”: Always Opposing Forces? Against the background of the different views expressed, albeit at different times, by Mann and Enzensberger, I will examine the “Geist” and “Macht” dichotomy in Germany in the modern period. However, I must first point to certain difficulties. First, we should not assume that the relationship was always marked by the kind of tensions stressed by Mann. Within all the periods under discussion, it would be possible to cite instances where particular writers, artists, and other intellectuals lived in harmony with the political authorities. This applies in relation to the Second Empire, the Nazi era, and the GDR, as well as to the democracies of Weimar and Bonn/Berlin. In the case of the Second Empire, it is only necessary to recall the numerous nationalistic monuments, for example the Völkerschlachtdenkmal in Leipzig, erected at this time, whose creators, at least, were willing to harness their talents to the national cause. In turn, Kaiser Wilhelm II took a keen interest in the arts, contributing himself to the building of another national monument in the same monumental style, the Hermannsdenkmal near Detmold, which commemorates the victory of Germanic tribes under Hermann (Arminius) over the invading Romans. Not surprisingly, he also intervened to prevent the award of a national prize to the socially concerned artist Käthe Kollwitz. In a recent publication, Mark Hewitson interestingly challenges the idea that leading German thinkers at the beginning of the twentieth century rejected the political structures of the Empire, suggesting rather that the French republican model no longer held any particular attraction (2000: 213–59). Among the names he mentions are the sociologist Max Weber and the historian Friedrich Meinecke. As for the mass of German academics at this time, the historian Gordon Craig describes them as the “intellectual bodyguards of the Hohenzollerns” (1978: 205). When war broke out in 1914, most intellectuals rallied to the national cause, with Thomas Mann, who at this time did not share his

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brother’s views, famously advocating the defense of German “Kultur” against French “Zivilisation.” Even in the Nazi era, there were writers and intellectuals of some standing, who, at least temporarily, identified, with the dictatorship. Among these were the philosopher Martin Heidegger, who accepted the post of Rector at the University of Freiburg, and the poet Gottfried Benn. The postwar GDR, which prided itself on creating a society where there was no need for conflict between intellect and power, represents a special case that will be considered later. Given all these complexities, all that can be attempted in this essay is to show instances of tension between the two spheres of “Geist” and “Macht” and possibly to suggest the extent of such tension. A second problem is that of periodization. It would appear self-evident that this kind of discussion must take as its point of orientation the various political and social systems under which some or all of the German people have lived in the past 130 or so years. While this will largely be the case, we must remember that cultural and political history do not necessarily run in tandem. Some recent observers have suggested that, for instance, the time between 1930 to 1960, which for all Germans encompassed three political systems, not counting the years of occupation, can be viewed as a single period in terms of cultural history, during which intellectual life 1 was marked by a dominance of conservative or traditionalist ideas. Whatever the validity of this theory, it is clear that 1945 did not mark a total caesura; previously established writers such as Benn continued to play an important role in postwar cultural life. At the same time, writers normally associated with the postwar period, such as Alfred Andersch and Wolfgang Koeppen, had been active before 1945 and in a number of cases been 2 members of the Reichsschrifttumskammer.

The “Geist” and “Macht” Dichotomy in the Weimar Republic It is now possible to consider in more detail instances of the conflict between the worlds of “Geist” and “Macht.” I will pay most attention to the post-1945 era, although to put the debates in context, I will also refer to earlier periods in German history, beginning with the Second Empire. References to possible affinities between intellectuals and the Second Empire mentioned in the previous section should not be taken to mean that relations between the two spheres were entirely harmonious. Heinrich Mann, with his satire on the subservient attitudes of the nationalistic bourgeoisie in Der Untertan, was not alone in his criticism.

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The theme of German unification, as achieved in 1871, provides an interesting case study. There were of course writers who descended into hagiography, for example Heinrich Leuthold in his poem “Das Eisen,” who expresses delight in the creation of the new German state in terms that stand in marked contrast to Mann’s ideals: “Nicht des Geistes, sondern des Schwertes Schärfe/gab dir alles, wiedererstandenes Deutschland” (Lamprecht 1969: 220). By contrast, the Austrian Grillparzer, whose fellow countrymen were excluded from the new Reich, commented that Bismarck had destroyed much that was valuable and created only insta3 bility. Even if such a viewpoint might be discounted as coming from someone on the losing side in the hegemonic struggle between Austria and Prussia, there were also critical voices from within the new Germany. Ferdinand von Saar, for example, begins his poem “Germania” with the elegiac lines: “O wie liebt ich dich einst, jetzt so gewaltiges Volk,/ als uneinig du noch träumtest von Einigung” (221). Later in the poem he expresses himself very much in the spirit of Heinrich Mann avant la lettre: “Ja, man fürchtet und preist weithin des Reiches Macht,/ doch man beugt sich nicht mehr willig dem deutschen Geist .” Whereas von Saar might be dismissed as a minor figure, the same cannot be said of Friedrich Nietzsche. Although he is generally associated with both German nationalism and the cult of power, he was no friend of the Second Empire. The position is succinctly summed up by Matthew Jefferies: “Nietzsche was a fierce critic of almost every aspect of Imperial Germany and its culture” (1997: 187). The Second Empire therefore presents a very mixed picture, which makes it almost impossible to generalize about the relationship at that time between intellect and power. Prior to unification in 1990 it was common to compare the Federal Republic with its doomed predecessor, the Weimar Republic. It could be pointed out that the Federal Republic’s Basic Law incorporated features that were aimed at preventing some of the weaknesses that had helped to destroy Weimar. For example, executive power was no longer shared between Chancellor and President, while it became extremely difficult for opportunistic alliances of parliamentary parties to topple the government by means of no-confidence motions and thus create a political vacuum. When it came to the reasons for the collapse of Weimar, it was commonly claimed that the first attempt to create a democratic republic in Germany had been thwarted by extremists: on the Right by the Nazis and on the left by the communists. This type of argument was used especially in the 1970s to justify the exclusion of “enemies of the constitution” (“Verfassungsfeinde”) from public service. Similar attitudes could be found in relation to the role of intellectuals during the Weimar

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Republic. They, too, it was held, had failed to support the democratic republic and thus contributed to its downfall. Günter Grass, for example, has based his political activity, which will be referred to in more detail later, on the belief that identification with the Federal Republic and its political processes was the appropriate course for writers, who wished to prevent the Bonn Republic going the way of Weimar. While it is certainly possible to criticize the attitudes of the KPD during the Weimar period — not least for its branding of Social Democrats as “Sozialfaschisten” and its totally misplaced belief, encapsulated in the slogan “Nach Hitler kommen wir,” that a Nazi regime would soon give way to a communist one — it should be pointed out that it was right-wing extremism in the form of the Nazis, aided and abetted by conservative elites, that ultimately destroyed Weimar. As for intellectual life, the democratic Republic was opposed from the outset by rightist nationalists, who either hankered back to the monarchy or sought some other nondemocratic form of government. In his two-volume study of the psychology of rightist authors during the Weimar period Männerphantasien, Klaus Theweleit quotes numerous examples of their antidemocratic attitudes. Franz Schauwecker, for example, shows a total disdain for the revolutionary masses of the early years of Weimar in the following passage: Unmöglich, vor denen da zu kapitulieren. Hohn über ihren Anspruch, der keinen Stolz kennt, keine Siegessicherheit, keine bändigenden Wellen. Gelächter über ihre Drohung, denn diese da marschierten aus Hunger, aus Müdigkeit, aus Neid, und unter diesen Zeichen hat noch niemand gesiegt. [. . .] Ich steifte mich und dachte “Kanaille” und “Pack” und “Mob” und “Pöbel”’ und kniff die Augen zusammen und besah diese dumpfen, ausgemergelten Gestalten; wie Ratten, dachte ich, die den Staub der Gosse auf dem Rücken tragen, sind sie, trippelnd und grau mit kleinen, rotgeränderten Augen. (Theweleit 2002: II, 9–10)

It will be recalled that the Nazis, not least in the anti-Semitic film Jud Süss, compared their enemies, the Jews, with rats. The same disdain towards forces that could be identified with democracy is visible in the writings of those rightists who gathered under the banner of the “conservative revolution.” One of the leading figures of this movement, Moeller van den Bruck, dismisses the forces of democracy as follows: “Kompromißler: Geduldmenschen, nicht Tatmenschen: Gestoßene, nicht Stoßende: Langmut, nicht Wagemut” (Reinhardt 1992: 72). This quotation shows the actionism of the conservative revolutionaries — one of their leading publications carried the title Die Tat — but leaves open the question of their own beliefs. These are ex-

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tremely difficult to pin down. In his study of the phenomenon, Roger Woods points out that their nationalism lay “in a remote and mysterious past” and was “unclear and essentially negative” (1996: 104). What is also beyond doubt is that the ideology of the “conservative revolution” was totally at odds with the democratic ideals of the Weimar Republic. By contrast, other writers and intellectuals welcomed the Republic, or at least the revolutionary events of 1918/1919 that overthrew the monarchy. Famously, Thomas Mann showed his newfound identification with democracy in his 1922 speech “Von deutscher Republik.” His brother Heinrich, while unhappy about certain aspects of Weimar, also embraced the new state: “Wir sollen unserer Republik es nie vergessen, daß in ihr, wie immer sie heute erscheine, der gute Keim des zu erneuernden Geistes der Deutschen schläft” (Reinhardt 1992: 64). At the same time, he strove for reconciliation with France, something that was only to be achieved after 1945 following the third conflict in less than a century between the two nations. What is held against many writers and intellectuals, who initially supported Weimar, is that, instead of defending democracy, they succumbed to disillusionment. Factors that played a role in this included the failure to reform either the judiciary or civil service, where monarchists continued to hold positions of power, and the attack on intellectual freedom that many writers saw in the “Schund- und Schmutzgesetz” of 1926. Even before this law was passed, the film censors had banned Eisenstein’s celebrated revolutionary epic Battleship Potemkin. In this same year of 1926 the leftwing writer Kurt Tucholsky expressed his personal disillusionment in the following aphoristic comment: “Diese Republik ist nicht die meine” (178). Five years later Hermann Hesse wrote in a letter to Thomas Mann about his “tiefes Mißtrauen gegen die deutsche Republik,” adding: Dieser haltlose und geistlose Staat ist entstanden aus dem Vakuum, aus der Erschöpfung nach dem Krieg. Die paar guten Geister der “Revolution,” welche keine war, sind totgeschlagen, unter Billigung von 99 Prozent des Volkes. Die Gerichte sind ungerecht, die Beamten gleichgültig, das Volk vollkommen infantil. Ich habe Anno 1918 die Revolution mit aller Sympathie begrüßt, meine Hoffnungen auf eine ernst zu nehmende deutsche Republik sind längst zerstört. (Reinhardt 1992: 207)

However open to criticism such comments are on the grounds of arrogance and elitism, it would be hard to claim that they constituted a decisive factor in the destruction of Weimar democracy. They were written the year after the last government to enjoy a parliamentary majority, the grand coalition under Hermann Müller (SPD), had collapsed. They

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seem to bear out the views of those, referred to above, who see 1930 as a kind of caesura in intellectual life. When the Nazis did assume power, one group of intellectual opponents was immediately visible through the fact of emigration. It is well known that major figures such as the Mann brothers and Brecht went into emigration, not least because in many cases the alternative would have been persecution and imprisonment. More problematical is the case of those who remained in Germany but claimed after the defeat of Nazism that they had always been opponents — that they had lived, to use the normal phrase, in “inner emigration.” This idea was given short shrift by Thomas Mann, when he suggested in 1945 that all books published during the Third Reich carried the stench of blood and shame. While this judgment may seem unduly harsh, it is possible to agree with the comment in a recent book by Elizabeth Boa and Rachel Palfreyman that “the literature of inner emigration from National Socialism often expressed a morally or religiously fueled, quietist spirit of opposition” (2000: 10). How far it is possible to speak of opposition at all in the case of writers associated with the conservative revolution remains a moot point. While it is true that Ernst Jünger, for example, developed a lofty disdain for the Nazis, Woods can point out that “(t)he views he comes to criticize so vehemently were once his own and became the views he attributes to the Nazis” (1996: 127). Right-wing opposition to Nazism, although certainly a fact, was tainted by its continuing failure to endorse democracy.

“Geist” and “Macht” in the GDR Although it is impossible to make a direct connection between the vicissitudes of German history in the first half of the twentieth century and the dichotomy between the worlds of intellect and power, the conflicts between the two realms can be viewed as symptoms of wider social and political crises. Hence, it is small wonder that one postwar German state, the German Democratic Republic, made great play of having created a society where the old enmities did not exist. On at least one occasion, namely 23 January 1966, the country’s first leader, Walter Ulbricht, was even moved to write (or, one suspects, have others write for him) to the party newspaper Neues Deutschland to proclaim this newly harmonious state of affairs. Moreover, any attempts to raise the specter of the old divisions were likely to meet with a severe rebuke, as in this comment by the cultural functionary Alexander Abusch, also made in 1966, and aimed at those West Germans, who, in keeping with the ethos of the Gruppe 47, were allegedly trying to promote the idea of writers as “non-

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conformists”: “Allzu primitiv ist auch der Sinn des Versuchs, einen ‘Nonkonformismus’ unserer Schriftsteller zu propagieren gegen die Einheit von Geist und Macht, die unsere sozialistische Gesellschaft verwirklicht” (1972: 295–96). The potentially most revealing word in the above quotation is the last one. Whereas unity is something that can usually be viewed as positive — and one can concede that the GDR authorities gave writers a significant place in society, in contrast to the Nazis with their scorn for the world of the intellect — the active methods used to “realize” the ideal of unity were anything but pleasant. At the least, they amounted to the suppression of anything that was deemed to be dangerous to the state’s ideology. Officially, the existence of censorship was denied and some things inevitably slipped through the net; nevertheless the system whereby everything that was printed, down to labels on consumer products, had to be licensed amounted in reality to the same thing. Even if something critical was published, there were other steps that could be taken that functioned as forms of censorship. These included limiting print runs, prevention of reviews, and the refusal to reprint once a first edition had run out. What was offered writers was a kind of compact, whereby they would be rewarded in terms of status and, in GDR terms, a relatively high standard of living, provided that they conformed. It is true that what constituted conformity — or at least acceptability — changed from time to time and that “constructive” criticism was deemed acceptable; nevertheless intellectual life remained an object for control and surveillance. Under these circumstances, it is small wonder that there were many instances of conflict between the realms of intellect and power, too numerous to be detailed here. I will mention only three key events. The first is the arrest and trial of intellectuals in 1956/57, in particular of Walter Janka and Wolfgang Harich, who were accused of being too close 4 to the “counterrevolution” in Hungary that was suppressed in 1956. Whereas in the first decade after the war, the Soviet, and later the GDR, authorities had pursued an inclusive cultural policy seeking to attract the support of “bourgeois writers” and welcoming those who had emigrated during the Third Reich, this policy was largely ended with the 1956 arrests. The ideal of unity between intellect and power, in which many intellectuals had undoubtedly sincerely believed, was, it was now clear, only to be achieved on the state’s terms. As stated above, these terms did change; however, periods of relative liberality were followed by clampdowns, as the next two examples show.

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Following the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the future of the GDR seemed assured, now that there was no longer the danger of a fatal hemorrhage brought about by the loss of population. The result was a period of greater intellectual freedom, which, however, was brought to an abrupt end in 1965. At the Eleventh Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the ruling Socialist Unity Party, Erich Honecker accused artists of disseminating “nihilistische, auswegslose und moralzersetzende Philosophien in Literatur, Film, Theater, Fernsehen und Zeitschriften,” while Ulbricht referred to “Nihilismus, Halbanarchismus, Pornographie” (Jäger 1994: 120). A major victim of the new hard line was the film industry, with several critical films being banned. Given Honecker’s record, it is small wonder that the artistic freedom that he seemed to be offering in 1971 on replacing Ulbricht by promising “no taboos” lasted at most only half a decade. The expulsion of the songwriter Wolf Biermann in 1976 provoked protests from leading writers in the country and led others to take the path of emigration. In some ways, this could be said to be the most significant example of conflict in that it provoked such widespread disillusionment, as the subsequent wave of emigration showed, that the bulk of writers and intellectuals no longer retained any hope of the GDR becoming the kind of society where they might work together with politicians to achieve socialist ideals. One might even claim that GDR literature, that is to say writing that, however critical, in some way identified with the state, largely came to an end in 1976. When the GDR itself ceased to exist, the relationship between its intellectuals and the state became a topic of heated discussion, with the most frequently expressed criticism being that they had remained too close to a “totalitarian” system of government. Such views immediately raise the question whether the GDR was an evil dictatorship and therefore comparable to Hitler’s Third Reich. In other words, can Thomas Mann’s criticism of books published under the Nazis, referred to above, be said to apply equally forty-five years later to the GDR? If such an attitude is adopted, then (in hindsight) the only acceptable course for GDR writers and intellectuals would have been to remain silent and/or leave the country. Indeed, particular opprobrium was heaped in the early 1990s on those writers who had appeared to criticize aspects of the GDR, yet remained loyal to the state and to the ideal of socialism. As is well known, the main target was Christa Wolf, not least because, as a young woman, she had cooperated with the Stasi for a brief period. Since it is a matter of record that her objections to the events of 1965 led to her being removed from her status as candidate for the Central Com-

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mittee of the SED and that she came under prolonged Stasi surveillance, all that needs to be said in this context is that her fate illustrates the existence of the intellect and power dichotomy in the GDR in a particu5 larly virulent form. The state that proclaimed harmony imprisoned, expelled, and spied on its writers and intellectuals. To their credit, many refused to be cowed and arguably helped to create the conditions for the peaceful revolution of 1989.

“Geist” and “Macht” in West Germany We must now consider the lot of writers and intellectuals in the other postwar German state: the Federal Republic of Germany. Here, too, the story is of conflict, at least for a time. As space does not permit reference to every instance of such conflict, I will pay most attention in this section to developments in the first years of the Federal Republic’s existence, while discussing the situation following unification in the final section. The first cause of tension between the post-1949 west German state and writers and intellectuals was the fact of its existence. The division of Germany, which came about formally through steps undertaken in the western part of the country (the currency reform and the creation of the Federal Republic), did not meet with widespread intellectual approval. This is not surprising since the state described itself as a “Provisorium,” the major goal of which was reunification. The danger of division and later the danger of its persistence exercised many writers from both East and West. Those from the East were entirely in harmony with the — at the time — professed aim of Soviet Zone/GDR politicians of maintaining/restoring German unity. Accordingly writers from all zones took part in a congress held in 1947, organized by the Soviet Zone Kulturbund, which expressed its disquiet about already apparent signs of division. When division came about, the ideal of German unity was kept alive in such publications as the collection of pieces by eastern and western writers about Germany entitled Wir heißen Euch hoffen (Schwarz and Weber 1951). For western writers and intellectuals it was not just the fact of the existence of a separate state that caused concern, but also the kind of policies that it pursued. The issue that provoked most anger was undoubtedly rearmament. This policy was decided on less than ten years after the total defeat of 1945, which seemed to have discredited the military ethos for ever. Parliamentary debate over rearmament dominates Wolfgang Koeppen’s 1953 novel Das Treibhaus with the title referring to the political atmosphere in the new capital of Bonn. The main character, an SPD parliamentarian Keetenheuve, whose attitudes seem to

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resemble those of many intellectuals in the early 1950s, fails in his campaign against the new army and commits suicide. The creation of this new army was linked by many intellectuals with the failure to confront the Nazi past, what at the time was called “unbewältigte Vergangenheit.” The next stage in the argument was the fear that, in the light of such developments, democracy would not last and writers would again be forced into exile. On 19 January 1956 Hans Werner Richter, the convenor of Gruppe 47, expressed such fears in a letter to Martin Walser: Ich meine, wir sollten endlich Initiative zeigen, sonst könnte es sein, dass wir in wenigen Jahren wieder bitterlich weinend an den Wassern von Babylon sitzen, und uns an die Brust schlagen müssen. Ich bin schuld, ich bin schuld, warum habe ich nichts getan. (Cofalla 1997: 93)

This particular comment, it should be noted, has a certain hollow ring when it is recalled that Richter himself did not go into exile and that those writers who had left Germany did not generally find favor in the Federal Republic, either with the Gruppe 47 or the wider reading public. Nevertheless, calls to action like the one from Richter were generally answered more favorably by the 1960s. By this time, despite the dislike of rearmament and the deep skepticism about the “economic miracle,” as expressed, for example, in the writings of Heinrich Böll, there was a greater willingness to identify with the Federal Republic. In 1961 there appeared a volume entitled Ich lebe in der Bundesrepublik, in which the editor Wolfgang Weyrauch expressed his love for his “Heimat” (Weyrauch 1961: 10). In his contribution “Skizze zu einem Vorwurf,” Martin Walser appears to blame writers as much as politicians for the continuing dichotomy between intellect and power. He ends his essay with the provocative exclamation: “In welche Verlegenheit brächten uns ein Staat, eine Gesellschaft, die uns einlüden zur Mitarbeit!” (114). Many writers now set about creating such a state through advocating a change of government. Volumes of essays appeared in the first half of the 1960s advocating, not always particularly enthusiastically, a vote for the Social Democratic Party (Walser 1961; Richter 1965), thus provoking the kind of comments from CDU politicians referred to at the beginning of this essay. In 1965 Günter Grass went further by undertaking a tour of the Federal Republic speaking in favor of the SPD, concentrating on those areas where the party was weakest. The goal of an SPD-led government was not of course achieved until 1969, by which time the Gruppe 47 had ceased to exist and some writers, in the wake of the student movement, appeared to be advocating the abandonment of traditional intellectual pursuits, specifically literature, in favor of revolutionary politics. Ironically,

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given his later stance, such an attitude became most associated with Enzensberger, although it must be stressed that this widely held perception undoubtedly involved a simplification of his views in the late 1960s. By contrast, Grass maintained his support for the SPD in 1969, not only by speaking for the party but also by helping to found the Sozialdemokratische Wählerinitiative, a loose organization for nonmember supporters of the party. At this time, Grass expressed, through his metaphor of the snail, 6 his belief in slow, evolutionary progress rather than revolution. In the late 1970s some writers felt challenged by the phenomenon of terrorism and the countermeasures taken by the SPD-led government of Helmut Schmidt, which were widely felt to endanger democratic freedoms. At the same time, there was a conscious effort not to return to Weimar attitudes with Bernt Engelmann, the chairman of the Verband deutscher Schriftsteller, making a point of declaring “Noch ist dies auch unsere Republik” (Wagenbach 1979: 310). Once terrorism had died down and the advent to power of Helmut Kohl in 1982 did not appear to threaten civil liberties, the previous conflicts between the worlds of intellect and power largely died down. Against such a background, it appears no coincidence that Enzensberger’s essay should appear half a decade into the Kohl era.

A Noble Struggle? The question that presents itself in this concluding section is whether the conflicts described above represent a noble struggle of positive against evil forces, which is roughly the position of Heinrich Mann, or are merely manifestations of a childish pastime, as suggested by Enzensberger. The obvious answer is that the issue is to be considered historically. It goes without saying that almost any form of opposition to National Socialism, whether practiced by intellectuals, accountants, or any other group, has to be praised. Something similar might well be said of the GDR, although, measured by the scale of human misery created, it cannot be compared with what preceded it. More problematical is the case of the Federal Republic, the one example of a largely successful democratic state on German soil. In this case, what has to be considered is almost exclusively criticism from the left. Although the extreme Right did not disappear in 1945, it did not attract the kind of intellectual support it had enjoyed in the Weimar years. Before any specific issues are discussed in detail, it is necessary to return to Enzensberger, who also adopts an historical approach. His description of the intellect and power controversy as an “Indianerspiel”

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relates specifically to the situation in the Federal Republic and particularly to the 1980s. He does not deny that there was reason for conflict in the past, attributing this to the fact “daß es eine deutsche Gesellschaft — im Sinne des selbstverständlichen Umgangs — nie gegeben hat” (1988: 207). Now, however, the situation has changed: “Es ist eben eine Weile her, daß es eine Reichshauptstadt gab, in der sich das Schicksal der Nation entschied” (215). Expressing a view that appears to owe something to Niklas Luhmann’s system theory, Enzensberger goes on to claim that the Federal Republic is characterized by “Selbststeuerung” (216). In other words, there are no longer any forces which seek to guide and control its direction or, as he puts it: “eine Instanz, die das Ganze lenken könnte, [ist] nicht mehr lokalisierbar” (216). Such a state of affairs, he suggests, is a feature of the GDR where there is “eine Zentralinstanz, welche die Zügel fest in der Hand hält” (215). Accordingly, that state offers “ideale Bedingungen für die ungetrübte Fortsetzung des Indianerspiels” (216). Despite the tone, one can take this as an endorsement of the critical role of GDR intellectuals. In any consideration of the current situation after unification, it will therefore be useful to ask whether the new capital of Berlin has taken on its former role, as alluded to by Enzensberger and possibly implied by the current term “Berliner Republik.” As for the preunification Federal Republic, Enzensberger does not stand alone in his criticisms of intellectuals who felt the need to confront those in power. This can be illustrated by recent criticisms of the Gruppe 47, the association of writers that undoubtedly became most celebrated for its social and political criticism in the first two postwar decades. Hans Hahn, for example, has criticized the “Rückgriff in eine deutsche Vergangenheit, in der Macht und Geist als Antipodien verstanden wurden” (1999: 286). Even more negatively, Frank Trommler has described the political activity of the Group as “nachgeholte Résistance,” implying that those associated with the Group, motivated by an awareness of intellectuals’ failure when it came to resisting National Socialism, had by way of compensation devoted their energies to attacking the democratic state in which they now lived. Trommler quotes, for example, Günter Eich’s comment on receipt of the Büchner Prize: “Wenn unsere Arbeit nicht als Kritik verstanden werden kann, als Gegnerschaft und Widerstand, als unbequeme Frage und die Herausforderung der Macht, dann schreiben wir umsonst, dann schmücken wir das Schlachthaus mit Geranien” (1991: 15). How far the metaphor of the slaughterhouse was ever applicable to the Federal Republic is of course very much open to question. How then is one to view the political role of authors associated with the Gruppe 47? Much will depend on an assessment of the early years of

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the Federal Republic, in particular what is usually called the Adenauer 7 era. For Richter, Adenauer was an authoritarian figure, whereas Gordon Craig, referring to Franco-German reconciliation and the integration of the Federal Republic into the western system, speaks of his “fundamental and impressive achievements” (1999: 295). These two views may not be mutually exclusive, but they do underline the difficulty of reaching easy conclusions. However, there were at least two occasions where the Group took part in successful campaigns against potentially undemocratic developments during the Adenauer era. When in 1960 the government attempted to introduce a centralized television channel — although responsibility for broadcasting lay with the Federal states — members of the Group joined in the chorus of protest. In the event, the Federal Constitutional Court prohibited the Adenauer government’s plans. Two years later the Group happened to be meeting when the Spiegel Affair broke, namely the arrest of journalists including the magazine’s proprietor Rudolf Augstein, who had continually criticized the government. Again writers from the Group protested against what appeared to be an unjustifiable attack on press freedom. They were vindicated when one of the leading actors in the affair, the defense minister Franz Josef Strauß, had to resign and the charges against the journalists were dropped. Even if the authors were acting in their own direct interests in fighting government control over the media, freedom of expression remains an essential part of a democratic society. Finally, it is necessary to consider the postunification position. Despite fears expressed at the time of unification about the resurgence of German power, Enzensberger’s statement that there is no central force directing German society still holds good, so that it remains possible to describe the Federal Republic as a “civil society.” Nor can it be claimed that German foreign policy since unification has been generally marked by nationalistic excess, even if individual policies, for example pressing for the recognition of Croatia in the early 1990s, may have been unwise. Accordingly it is not surprising that many writers have turned away from direct involvement in politics. There is in fact a wide consensus that art and politics are no longer closely entwined. In an essay published in 1998 about oppositional art, whose conclusions could equally be applied to literature, the political scientist Klaus von Beyme puts forward the following reasons for this development: Die Konsolidierung der Demokratie hat diese Regierungsform berechenbarer, aber auch erlebnisärmer werden lassen. Kritische Künstler wollen heute keine “andere Republik.” Es gehört zu den Paradoxien der Demokratie, daß die große Mehrzahl der Künstler die Grundord-

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nung (polity) akzeptiert, die innere Distanz zur Politik (politics, alltäglicher Prozeß der Politik) jedoch immer größer wird. Die Demokratietheorie hat seit den siebziger Jahren zunehmend festgestellt, daß Politik für die meisten Menschen und ihre Lebensvollzüge bloß marginale Bedeutung hat. Was für die Bürger schlechthin gilt, muß für die Künstler erst recht akzeptiert werden. Eine erneute Entdifferenzierung kann nur durch populistische und autoritäre Bewegungen durchgesetzt werden. (1998: 174)

If von Beyme’s thesis is accepted, then the old intellect and power dichotomy is at an end. Given that this state of affairs is a result of the democratic stability of the Federal Republic, it can only be welcomed. Nevertheless, this does not mean that the worlds of writing and politics remain entirely distinct. Von Beyme concludes his essay by saying that the move away from politics in the narrow sense does not affect art’s oppositional potential, what he calls “Die Fähigkeit der Künste, nein zu sagen” (174). But this capability, he adds, “richtet sich gegen die Interventionen, die von anderen Subsystemen ausgehen, vor allem von der Okonomie.” If, however, one looks at the major issues that have concerned intellectuals since 1989/1990, it is remarkable that conflict has arisen within the intellectual “sub-system” itself: among these issues are the Literaturstreit of 1990, which had to do with the role of GDR intellectuals, the controversy aroused by Botho Strauß’s 1993 essay “Anschwellender Bocksgesang,” conflicts over the Holocaust Memorial, and reactions to Martin Walser’s 8 1998 Friedenspreis speech attacking the instrumentalization of Auschwitz. Intellectual engagement with political questions is clearly not at an end, but taking new forms and considering other issues. If the postunification debates could be reduced to a single common factor, then it would be questions of Germany’s history and identity. Political institutions or the stances of specific politicians are no longer at the center of attention. In other words — if Enzensberger’s Indian metaphor may be used yet again — intellectuals have moved out of the “Geist und Macht” reservation to find new hunting grounds. Without this development the public sphere in Germany would be much poorer.

Notes 1

For an explanation of this controversial theory, see Schäfer (1978).

2

See the chapter by David Basker in the current volume.

3

The following epigrams give some idea of Grillparzer’s thoughts: “Der deutsche Bund war nicht schlecht von Haus/Gab auch Schutz in jeder Fahrlichkeit,/Nun setz’er etwas Altmodisches voraus:/Die Treue und die Ehrlichkeit” (Grillparzer

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1960–63: I, 586). And (entitled “Den Deutschen”): “Schreitet nicht so schnell fort, nur etwas gemach!/Ihr kommt Euch sonst selber nicht nach!” (591). Given the events of 1914, it could be claimed that Grillparzer’s warnings were well founded. 4 For an account of these events, see Janka (1989). 5

There is a plethora of literature on what is generally known as the “deutschdeutscher Literaturstreit” and the case of Christa Wolf in particular. See, for example, Anz (1991), and Vinke (1995). 6

Grass recounts his experiences in the 1969 election campaign in the 1972 book whose title incorporates the snail metaphor, namely Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke. 7 With reference to the Spiegel Affair, Richter writes of Adenauer in a letter to his brother Otto: “(er) wird [. . .] immer autoritärer und faselt von einem Abgrund von Landesverrat dort, wo es sich nur um eine in einer Demokratie notwendigen Kritik handelt” (Richter 1997: 436). 8

For more information on the Holocaust memorial, see the contribution by Caroline Gay towards the end of this book.

Works Cited Abusch, Alexander. “Der Sinn unserer Diskussion über Fragen der Kunst und der Literatur.” In Alexander Abusch, Humanismus und Realismus in der Literatur. Leipzig: Reclam, 1972, 291–307. Anz, Thomas, ed. “Es geht nicht um Christa Wolf.” Der Literaturstreit im vereinigten Deutschland. Munich: edition spangenberg, 1991. Beyme, Klaus von. “Die Kunst der Macht und die Gegenmacht der Kunst. Künstler in politischer Opposition.” In Klaus von Beyme, Die Kunst der Macht und die Gegenmacht der Kunst. Studien zum Spannungsverhältnis von Kunst und Politik. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1998, 145–79. Boa, Elizabeth and Rachel Palfreyman. Heimat: A German Dream. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. Buch, Hans-Christoph, ed. Tintenfisch 15. Thema Deutschland. Berlin: Wagenbach, 1978. Cofalla, Sabine. Der “soziale Sinn” Hans Werner Richters. Berlin: Weidler, 1997. Craig, Gordon A. Germany 1866–1945. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1978. ———. Politics and Culture in Modern Germany. Palo Alto: Sposs, 1999. Enzensberger, Hans Magnus. “Macht und Geist. Ein deutsches Indianerspiel.” In Mittelmaß und Wahn. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988, 207–20. Grass, Günter. Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke. Darmstadt und Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1972. Grillparzer, Franz. Samtliche Werke. 4 vols. Munich: Hanser, 1960–63.

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Hahn, Hans J. “Literarische Gesinnungsnazis oder spätbürgerliche Formalisten. Die Gruppe 47 als deutsches Problem.” In The Gruppe 47 Fifty Years On, ed. Stuart Parkes and John J. White. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999, 279–92. Hewitson, Mark. National Identity and Political Thought in Germany: Wilhelmine Depictions of the French Third Republic 1890–1914. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. Jäger, Manfred. Kultur und Politik in der DDR 1945–1990. Cologne: Edition Deutschland Archiv, 1994. Janka, Walter. Schwierigkeiten mit der Wahrheit. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1989. Jefferies, Matthew. “Imperial Germany. Cultural and Intellectual Trends.” In German History Since 1800, ed. Mary Fulbrook. London: Arnold, 1997, 181–98. Koeppen, Wolfgang. Das Treibhaus. Stuttgart: Scherz und Goverts, 1953. Lamprecht, Helmut, ed. Politische Gedichte vom Vormärz bis zur Gegenwart. Bremen: Carl Schünemann Verlag, 1969. Mann, Heinrich. Essays. Berlin: Aufbau, 1994. ———. “Geist und Tat.” In Geist und Tat. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1960, 9–16. ———. Der Untertan. Munich: dtv, 1993. Reinhardt, Stephan, ed. Die Schriftsteller und die Weimarer Republik. Berlin: Wagenbach, 1992. Richter, Hans Werner, ed. Briefe, ed. Sabine Cofalla. Munich and Vienna: Hanser, 1997. ———. Plädoyer für eine neue Regierung oder Keine Alternative. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1965. Schäfer, Hans Dieter. “Zur Periodisierung der deutschen Literatur seit 1930.” In Das gespaltene Bewusstsein. Über deutsche Kultur und Lebenswirklichkeit 1933–1945. Munich: Hanser, 1981, 55–71. Schulze, Gerhard. Die Erlebnisgesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1992. Schwarz, Georg and Carl August Weber, eds. Wir heißen Euch hoffen. Munich: Verlag Willi Weissmann, 1951. Theweleit, Klaus. Männerphantasien. 2 vols. Munich: Piper, 2000. Trommler, Frank. “Die nachgeholte Résistance. Politik und Gruppenethos im historischen Zusammenhang.” In Die Gruppe 47 in der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik, ed. Julius Fetscher, Eberhard Lämmert, and Jürgen Schütte. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1991, 9–22 Tucholsky, Kurt. Ausgewählte Briefe. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1962.

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Vinke, Hermann, ed. Akteneinsicht Christa Wolf. Hamburg: Luchterhand Literaturverlag, 1995. Wagenbach, Klaus, ed. Vaterland, Muttersprache. Deutsche Schriftsteller und ihr Staat. Berlin: Wagenbach, 1979. Walser, Martin, ed. Die Alternative oder Brauchen wir eine neue Regierung? Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1961. Weyrauch, Wolfgang. “Bemerkung des Herausgebers.” In Ich lebe in der Bundesrepublik, ed. Wolfgang Weyrauch. Munich: List, 1961, 7–10. Wickert, Ulrich. Vom Glück, Franzose zu sein. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1999. Woods, Roger. The Conservative Revolution in the Weimar Republic. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996.

“In the Exile of Internment” or “Von Versuchen, aus einer Not eine Tugend zu machen”: German-Speaking Women Interned by the British during the Second World War1 Charmian Brinson

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N THE COURSE of the Second World War, around twenty-five thousand

German-speaking men — from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia — 2 and perhaps four thousand women, many of them refugees from National Socialism, were held for varying periods of time in British prisons and alien internment camps. The subject of male internment and, in particular, the political, cultural, and educational activity that arose in the men’s camps, albeit in difficult circumstances, have been relatively well researched within the field of German exile studies. Comparatively little is known, however, about the efforts of the women to recreate forms of social, political, and cultural organization in captivity as they too found themselves caught up in 3 circumstances beyond their control. In this essay I hope to make good the deficiency by examining documents of the time and also by considering some of the reflections — published and unpublished, written and spoken, and composed in both German and English — of German-speaking women internees who range from well-known cultural and political exiles from Hitler to totally “unknown” women. It was not the initial intention of the British authorities in 1939 to introduce a policy of mass alien internment as they had in 1914, not least because this time around tens of thousands of the German-speaking population in Britain were racial or political refugees. In fact, only as the military situation deteriorated with the collapse of Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France, and the invasion of Britain appeared imminent, was the Home Office pressured into ordering a large-scale internment of aliens in May and June 1940. On a smaller scale, however, MI5 had been given the power, even before the outbreak of war, to arrest all persons on its Security List who were suspected of adherence to

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the National Socialist regime (about 415). The women among them were sent to Holloway Prison where they were joined soon after by around two hundred others graded “A” by the tribunals before which all aliens soon had to appear. An “A” grading indicated a high security risk, “B” that some uncertainty could be held to exist, and “C” that loyalty to the British cause was not in question. The confusion that permeated the entire British effort to categorize the alien population is illustrated, this early on, by the fact that even the first group of MI5 suspects included possibly as many anti-Nazis and Jews as it did genuine Nazis. As for the Alien Tribunals, though these were generally well intentioned, there were countless instances of inconsistencies and injustices in the decisions reached, often caused by ignorance or prejudice on the part of the tribunal chairmen. There was a particular muddle surrounding the doubtful “B” class — certain tribunals automatically categorized all domestic servants as “B,” for instance — while an “A” categorization, which led to immediate internment, was frequently given on the flimsiest of pretexts. Two of the women caught up in the first wave of arrests, the Austrian writer Elisabeth von Janstein and the German Socialist Erna Nelki, have recorded their experiences at this time, the former in her fragmen5 tary unpublished “Holloway Journal,” the latter, briefly, as part of her published “Autobiographie einer politischen Emigrantin” (Nelki 1982). Each assumed, initially, that her arrest had come about as part of a general anti-alien measure; to each, therefore, it came as a particular shock to realize that, on the contrary, she must be deemed exceptionally suspicious by the authorities, with Janstein registering the emotions of “Scham, Trauer and Zorn” (66) and Nelki her acute distress at finding none of her political friends in her situation (48). It is probable that Janstein and Nelki both figured on the MI5 Security List as the result of 6 a denunciation from within the exile community and, in any case, both were released from prison within a matter of months, Nelki at the intervention of the British Independent Labour Party or ILP (51). Nevertheless, it was a disturbing experience which Janstein, in particular, chronicles in painstaking detail: the humiliating admission procedure, the initial solitary confinement, the lack of clean clothing, the uncomfortable prison bed, the screams emanating from adjacent cells, the uncertainty and the fear. On the other hand, both Janstein and Nelki emphasize the support gained from the presence of other women in the same situation (a reflection that would later be repeated, many times over, in the accounts of mass alien internment on the Isle of Man). Nelki, indeed, recalls becoming part of a small group of women in Holloway who ex-

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changed confidences, shared out their food parcels and passed the time together by sewing toys (intended as donations to a hospital) and singing the songs that were provided by comrades in the ILP (50). As already stated, the move from a selective to a mass alien internment policy occurred in May and June 1940, with category “B” men being arrested on May 16, 1940, category “B” women on 27 May, Italians from 10 June and, from 22 June, the category “C” men (with a few exceptions, the policy was not extended to category “C” women). Around 3600 women had been placed in category “B” of whom over half were also classified as refugees from Nazi oppression. As late as 17 May, Sir John Anderson, the Home Secretary, had still declared himself reluctant to consider the mass internment of women: If thousands of women, including pregnant women and women with small children, were subjected to the conditions of barrack-room life in some sort of internment camp, there would soon be a public outcry against this treatment of persons of whom the great majority are refugees and most are individually known to British subjects who are con7 vinced of their friendliness.

However, the memorandum by Sir Nevile Bland (former British Minister to The Hague), drawing on his recent experiences in Holland and entitled “Fifth Column Menace,” which claimed that “the paltriest kitchen 8 maid” could constitute “a menace to the safety of the country,” and a parliamentary interjection by the Conservative MP Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Thomas Moore, posing the question: “Is not the female of any spe9 cies generally more dangerous than the male?,” were indicative of the way things were moving. Thus on 27 May, at 7:00 A.M., category “B” women between the ages of 16 and 60 (with certain exceptions) were 10 arrested and taken to holding centers or women’s prisons to await transportation to internment on the Isle of Man. Just as for the first group of women arrested early on in the war, so prison proved a formative and unprecedented experience for the “B” category women jailed in May 1940. Livia Laurent, for example, whose memoir A Tale of Internment was published soon after her release, expressed her “profound astonishment at finding such extraordinary comradeship among so many women of different types, classes, and countries” (Laurent 1942: 28). Laurent was held in Holloway Prison at the time in question, as was Ruth Herring, a teacher of German from a renowned girls’ public school, who was startled by an encounter with the criminal classes:

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I was standing next to a very nice looking young woman and I said, “Why are you here?” So far, in the exercise yard, the answer would have been, “Because I’m Austrian,” or “Because I’m an enemy alien.” [She 11 however replied:] “Well I took his wallet while he was in the bath.”

Ruth Borchard’s semi-autobiographical character Anna Thilo has an additional problem with which to contend, that of being admitted to Holloway with a small child in tow. The practical problems involved here — in the feeding and sleeping arrangements, for instance — are overwhelming, as is the bureaucracy Thilo encounters, yet she does 12 experience some kindness at the hands of her British captors. Meanwhile the later author and educator Marie Neurath, who had managed to escape — at the eleventh hour — from Holland, her first country of refuge, and was then taken (via the Fulham Institute) to Holloway, determined to adopt a positive attitude in captivity: We got busy: everyone had a little blackboard and a piece of chalk. Some started Spanish lessons [. . .] We were given books and wool. We had to knit stockings for soldiers: it was a pleasure.

Neurath also records some rudimentary attempts at collective cultural activity of the sort that would later flourish on the Isle of Man: Then Rosy Hahn also had her birthday and I made up a little poem. I got some toilet paper and made copies and distributed them, so that we had a small choir. Rosy sang Schubert to us and tears ran down our cheeks. (Kochan 1983: 35–36)

On a superficial level, at least, there could scarcely have been a greater contrast between confinement in Holloway and other prisons and the comparative freedom of the Isle of Man where the first women arrived on 29 May 1940. Rushen Camp, for women internees and their accompanying children under sixteen, was formed from the southern peninsula of the island and bounded by a barbed-wire fence. After the Mooragh Men’s Camp, it was the second camp to open on the island. The women were billeted in the hotels and boarding houses of two small seaside resorts, Port Erin and Port St. Mary, which held around three 13 thousand and one thousand internees respectively. The accommodation ranged from the largest hotel there, the Ballaqueeney, which could take several hundred internees, to boarding houses that took perhaps six. Unlike the men’s camps, these remained in possession of the landladies, who were also in charge of the catering (a frequent source of friction in the months to come).

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Though the largest number of internees was undoubtedly made up of the Jewish refugee contingent, the population in Rushen also comprised several other distinct groups. There were, for a start, the political and intellectual exiles (who might or might not also be Jewish), and the wives of “non-Aryan” Christian pastors, a number of whom had been brought to Britain by that friend of the refugees, Bishop Bell of 14 Chichester. A group of nurses, deaconesses from the German Hospital in London, had been rounded up. There were also the non-Jewish girls from Germany and Austria, some of them with pronounced Nazi sympathies, who had come to Britain as maids during the 1930s. Other women of National Socialist views included the fanatical Wanda Wehr15 han, the wife of the former pastor to the German Embassy. And there were also groups of internees who can best be described as anomalous: young German and Austrian girls arrested on or around their sixteenth birthday without being given the opportunity to appear in front of a tribunal, Jewish women who had arrived in Britain at the beginning of the century but had never applied for British citizenship, British-born wives or widows of German nationals, Czechs and diverse other nationals who had got caught up in the internment procedures. The summer of 1940 was favored with exceptionally good weather and the internees were able to benefit from the beaches and the sporting facilities, including swimming pools, tennis courts, and golf links, that Port Erin and Port St. Mary had to offer (a fact that gave rise to some 16 hostile comment in the British press and parliament). Yet despite the undoubtedly pleasant location, the internees experienced numerous problems and difficulties, especially in the early days of the camp. One of the most highly publicized of these was the provision of double beds that were, generally speaking, the standard sleeping accommodation in the island’s hotels. Incidents were reported in which, at least initially, sick and healthy women and even Nazis and Jews were compelled to share a 17 bed. Other causes for complaint included the slowness of the postal service and the general lack of communication with the outside world, difficulties with the Manx householders, inadequate food and medical and dental facilities, problems with the camp organization (including a lack of internee involvement), and intimidation of the Jewish majority by the National Socialist minority. In addition, the person of the Camp Commandant, Dame Joanna Cruickshank, a former Matron-in-Chief of the British Red Cross Society, provided a further focus for discontent: she was frequently accused of having no understanding of the German situation and hence no idea of the differences between the Nazi and antiNazi factions in her charge.

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One of the first ways in which the internees attempted to gain at least a certain semblance of control over their lives was in the matter of the camp organization. In an oral history interview, Brigitte Jacobs (later Davies) recalls the “initial chaos” that prevailed as well as the subsequent efforts by the internees to draw up lists of names and elect representatives 18 for the individual houses. The unfortunate Erna Nelki, who had been rearrested in May 1940, tellingly entitles a section of her internment memoir “4000 Frauen organisieren sich” (Nelki 1981: 122). It should be noted in this connection that, while the internees in the men’s camps were permitted a considerable degree of self-government, there was no parallel to this in Rushen where Dame Joanna kept the reins firmly in her own hands. Nevertheless, as well as the house representatives, district representatives and a Camp Leader were elected from among the women internees and met Dame Joanna on a regular basis in order to discuss problems as they arose. Not that the authorities were always receptive to internee concerns: the engineer Ira Rischowki, a socialist exile and a leading figure in the life of the camp, has described how at an early stage she attempted to bring official attention to bear on some of the most pressing anxieties (such as the whereabouts of internees’ children or husbands): I drew up a long list and took them to the camp authorities. And I was apparently unlucky because the lady to whom I started to read my queries became very irate and banged the table and said: “Stop telling us 19 what we ought to do.”

Another way in which the internees, both male and female, attempted to ameliorate their situation lay in the organization of practical and cultural activities. Anna Spiro, in a privately published memoir, reflects on the necessity for such diversions as well as on their inevitable limitations: Most of us realized how important it was to be occupied and to keep ourselves busy. We therefore did a great deal to organize talks on subjects of general interest, language courses and the like. All that seemed fine and made life tolerable. . . . However things were very different in the evenings when there was plenty of time to think and to consider our position. Here we were a sitting target if ever the Germans were to come. (Spiro 1988: 70)

From the very beginning, there were of course individual attempts to occupy the time usefully, for instance with handicrafts of various kinds. However, given the situation in Rushen, where internees had both time and skills at their disposal but frequently lacked the means with which to buy even the most basic necessities, the camp-wide Service Exchange Scheme, set up by the young Socialist economist Ruth Bor-

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chard in September 1940, was a brilliant innovation (which had no direct 20 parallel in any of the men’s camps). The scheme, as Borchard would later describe it in a prizewinning essay, was for “productive unemployment relief providing voluntary work, foods, services and self-respect” (Borchard 1943: 2). Encouraged by the Religious Society of Friends, who were active in the camp, and then by the Commandant, it proposed the introduction of a mini-economy consisting of an exchange of services between internees to be paid for by a currency of service tokens. A notice was posted in the camp on 19 September 1940 asking for experts in sewing, laundry work, field and garden work, and so on; within the first two weeks, 1200 women had come forward. The range of services soon expanded to include such offerings as private tuition and legal advice while, with the increasing sophistication of the scheme, the tokens could be used to purchase food in the canteen or access to communal services (to the lending library, for instance, or to camp entertainments). Ingenious projects that came under the Service Exchange umbrella included the collection of 21 plants, shells, and leftovers from the hotels for the making of chicken feed and the large-scale production of netted shopping bags, some of which were sold to organizations on the mainland (Borchard 1943: 10). As part of the Service Exchange, women could also be trained in a variety of skills: classes 22 to teach women to make the net bags attracted more than 150, for instance, while others learned crocheting or cutting and dressmaking. The Service Exchange Scheme was finally liquidated in November 1941 by which time the growing number of releases had made it unviable. As its final director, the Austrian Communist Anna Hornik, would conclude in her report, it played “a great part in the community life of the Women’s Camp on the Isle of the Man,” having provided 177,000 hours of employment and given out 9,164 individual jobs as well as having “fought successfully 23 the demoralizing idleness to which women internees were condemned.” Side by side with the rather more commercially orientated activities promoted by the Service Exchange, there was a wide-ranging educational program on offer in Rushen, also put on by the internees themselves. As Ira Rischowski’s daughter Harriet Karthäuser (later Albu) recalls in an oral history interview, there were “a lot of tremendously intellectual 24 women knocking around,” among them the internationally renowned educationalist Minna Specht who put her experience at the service of the camp both in the area of adult education and in that of school provision for internees’ children (see below). Indeed, cultural and educational activities flourished just as much in the women’s camps as in the men’s, even though, as mentioned above, much less is known about these activities today. Admittedly the women had

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to contend with difficulties in the adult education sphere that the men did not encounter, a fact that stemmed from the degree of control that Dame Joanna Cruickshank continued to exert in her camp. The Communist politician Emmy Koenen recalls how Dame Joanna forbade any women to lecture who were not academically qualified, thereby preventing both Koenen and Anna Hornik from speaking on Germany and Austria respectively, as they had intended (Koenen 1978). However, Louise Leonhard, reflecting on her own internment experiences in the refugee newspaper Die Zeitung in 1941, maintains that there were still enough women “die imstande waren, gute Vorträge und seminarartige Kurse geistes- und naturwissenschaftlicher Art zu halten, um dem großen Hunger nach geistiger Nahrung Befriedigung zu verschaffen” (Leonhard 1941: 3). And indeed the extensiveness of the adult education provision is underlined by a Home Office report of March 1941 listing the complete range of classes on offer in the Women’s Internment Camp. The Adult Education Centre at Port St. Mary where, as it happened, a larger proportion of the intellectual women were billeted, provided tuition in thirty different subjects (over forty classes in total), including Greek, Reading of Shakespeare, German Literature, History of England, Problems of Life, and Mathematical Training, as well as practical skills like shorthand and glove-making. The equivalent center at Port Erin offered seventeen subjects (twenty-seven classes in all) that tended to be of a more practical nature (spinning, weaving, and three separate dressmaking classes, for example) but also included musical appreciation and a small string orchestra. At a third center (Dandy Hill), where thirteen subjects (twentynine classes altogether) were on offer, the list ran: “Philosophy, English, Italian, Spanish, French, Russian, Shorthand, Latin, Phonetics, European 25 History, Swedish, Faust, Psychology.” Women internees of a scientific bent were able to benefit from the fact that the Marine Biological Station, situated within easy reach of the 26 camp, was open to them, thanks to a particularly sympathetic director. Brigitte Jacobs who had been studying zoology before her internment found the work there a comfort at a time of deep depression. She was put in charge of around six internee women who collected seaweed for 27 the preparation of agar plates for biological research. Suitably qualified women — this privilege was not extended to the men whose camps were not located sufficiently near the Station — were allowed to carry out research work there and to attend the lectures on scientific subjects given by one of the forty women internees registered at the Station. They were also permitted to study in the Quiet Room and to use the excellent science library. It should perhaps be noted that there were mutual bene-

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fits deriving from this arrangement: the Marine Biological Station’s Report for 1941 records that “with the help of one or two internees with experience in library work, the Station’s collection of separata on marine biological and hydrographical subjects, numbering several thousand 28 papers, has been entirely reorganized, reboxed and catalogued.” Obviously in the camp itself there was also great need of a library service. Ruth Michaelis-Jena, who had been employed as a bookseller in Scotland prior to her internment, relates in her autobiography Heritage of the Kaiser’s Children how she was asked to organize the books supplied by charitable institutions and individuals into a proper library and how she was “delighted at the prospect of something to fill the vacant and depressing hours.” In addition, so she reflects, “access to a great lot of reading material was a blessing in itself.” The library turned out to be a great success, with hundreds of readers, among them “some famous European 29 names,” and a rapidly increasing stock (Michaelis-Jena 1983: 136). If reading proved a popular diversion, so too, on a more collective basis, did the organization of camp entertainments, namely dramatic and musical performances of all kinds. As in the men’s camps, such endeavors were considerably assisted by the presence of ex-actors, drama teachers, and musicians. In the run-up to Christmas 1940, in particular, so Louise Leonhard records in her Die Zeitung piece, internees kept themselves busy with music and drama rehearsals resulting in, among other things, “altdeutsche Weihnachtsspiele . . . in denen das echte, gute Deutschtum Albrecht Dürers und Martin Schongauers lebendig wurde” (1941: 3). Another theatrical production to mark Christmas 1940, clearly a most memorable one since it is recalled in virtually all internee memoirs, was a play, instigated by Minna Specht in a plea for mutual tolerance, that attempted to unite the Jewish and Christian traditions. At Easter 1941 there was what Ira Rischowski termed “a very creditable performance” of Everyman, involving the majority of the Port St. Mary internees and playing to full houses for an entire week. Other internment accounts refer to a performance of the operetta Das Dreimäderlhaus as well as to an adaptation of Turandot — Marie Neurath seems to have been the initiator here, Marie Reidemeister the author — that made an explicit plea for the setting up of a mixed camp. As it happened, the latter production was much appreciated by Theo Naftel, visiting the camp on behalf of the International Cooperative Women’s Guild, who not only judged the performance “amusing and well done” but also commented on “the ingenuity displayed 30 in the designing and making of the scenery and costumes.” Louise Leonhard, emphasizing the diversity of the entertainment on 31 offer, records the frequent staging of puppet productions — which would

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have held a particular appeal, of course, for the children in the camp — and also of “Revue-artige Vorstellungen, bei denen Wiener Anmut und süddeutsche Derbheit, ostjüdische Schwermut und Berliner Humor, klassische Musik und gegenwartsgeborene Spottlieder einen guten Zusammenklang gaben” (1941: 3). The journalist Margot Strauss (later Pottlitzer), at one point head of the entertainment committee, who had a promising young dancer and some singers at her disposal, managed to put on a Viennese evening. This proved such a success that she ventured to book a hall for a repeat performance, while forgetting to ask Dame Joanna Cruickshank for her consent (she was soundly rebuked for this 32 omission). It is probable that a Variety Show produced early on, in July 1940, at the Golf Links Hotel, achieved a rather less polished overall standard than Strauss’s Viennese evening, though the presence of a copy 33 of the program among Ira Rischowski’s posthumous papers suggests that it, too, was a memorable occasion. The linking commentary, or “conférence,” sung to the tune of the Lambeth Walk and consisting of mildly satirical references to camp life — though not to anything remotely contentious — was punctuated by performances ranging from the classical (Schubert songs by the Viennese Sidi Stahl) to the chorus line (for example, a dance sequence by “Street girls from the Hamburg Reeperbahn”). On a more serious note, Brigitte Jacobs remembers attending “one or two really very moving and beautiful concerts where they sang Handel 34 or Bach,” and Irma Lange that an internee would from time to time organize wonderful concerts on the basis of gramophone records sent 35 her from London. Indeed, Johanna Metzger (later Lichtenstern), a professional singer, remembers being involved in a very rich and varied musical life in Rushen and participating in frequent rehearsals and recitals of all kinds, as her Internment Diary entry for 27 October 1940 records: Ich muß mal rasch überlegen, was ich alles bisher zu den Veranstaltungen gesungen habe. Zuerst jiddische Lieder, ernst und heiter, dann an einem ernsten Abend Schubert, dann “gesungene Tänze” (Carmen, Walzer, Tango), dann ein “Mutter u. Kind” Abend, Wiegenlieder u. jiddische Lieder mit Kindern zusammen, u. jetzt zuletzt (in zwei Tagen gesucht, gefunden und gelernt) ein ungarisches Zarah-Leander Lied, “Sous les toits [de Paris]” (frz.) und eine Parodie! auf einen englischen “Wiener” Film! Dazwischen in der Kirche “anständige” Musik und im 36 “koscheren Haus” religiöse.

A number of the concerts she gave were directed by Dora Lask (better known as Dora Diamant, the friend of Franz Kafka), who, as a 37 trained actress, also contributed recitations. As intimated in Metzger’s diary extract, the musical life of the camp was further promoted by the

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Methodist Church in Port Erin, under its compassionate minister, Rev. J. Benson Harrison, as part of the pastoral care he extended to the internee population. On 6 September 1940, for instance, the local newspaper, the Isle of Man Examiner, reported on a “unique musical service” in Port Erin, with the church “crowded to capacity,” at which the Berlin soprano Jeanette Simon, in addition to leading the hymns, had performed a solo from Madam Butterfly and Johanna Metzger an aria from 38 Haydn’s Creation. Simon and Metzger performed again at a “weekly 39 service of community singing” at the church on 27 September while, on 3 October, there was yet another musical occasion under the auspices of the Methodist Church, this time with contributions from both Manx and internee women (the latter including Deaconesses from the German 40 Hospital, who performed two songs). One of the items featuring in the Golf Links Hotel’s Variety Show, mentioned above, consisted of some songs by the “Golf Links Choir” under the baton of Ira Rischowski. Barbara Isralowitz (later Eaton) who, at sixteen, was amongst the youngest internees, was an enthusiastic Golf Links Choir member; she recalls how “we practiced practically daily 41 because we were very ambitious and we began to give concerts.” Rischowski herself, in her own oral history testimony, has recorded how the choir originated in the communal washing up sessions, progressing on from that with the help of a piano accompanist and the loan of a copy of the News Chronicle Song Book (from which they sang British folk songs and sea shanties). The Golf Links Choir later joined forces with a general camp choir, led by Johanna Metzger, who managed to obtain music from London. At Christmas 1940, as a special concession, Metzger was permitted to take her choir carol singing (although, since this involved being out after curfew, a police presence was of course still required); they ended the evening with a performance for Dame Joanna and were 42 presented with red apples — a rare treat — by way of a reward. Of the Golf Links Choir, happily, a bold pen and ink drawing has survived, cartoon style, depicting Ira Rischowski wielding her baton; at her feet are her knitting needles (she was by all accounts a keen knitter), and 43 a folder crammed with lists (as befitting a district representative). The drawing is by Lotte Salzberger who was also responsible for the sets for the Golf Links Variety Show. Much has been written about the artistic activities of the male internees at this period and relatively little about art in the women’s camp. But in fact, there appears to have been a great deal of art work of various kinds going on in Rushen, with Collinson’s Café, a favorite internee meeting place in Port Erin, turning into an arts and crafts 44 center (specializing in folk art and craft). Brigitte Jacobs, for her part, has

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recalled how at the Marine Biological Station an internee artist — M. Sussmann — was charged with painting the marine animals held in tanks there and how friezes of her paintings were displayed around the entrance 45 hall. An article in the Manchester Guardian in November 1940, in fact an interview with Dame Joanna Cruickshank, records that, among other internee activities, “a talented Austrian sculptor holds clay-modeling classes 46 and her pupils are doing good work.” Three further interned sculptresses — German rather than Austrian — are mentioned by Klaus Hinrichsen in his essay “Visual Art Behind the Wire”: Pamina LiebertMahrenholz, Erna Nonnenmacher and Margarete Klopfleisch (Cesarani and Kushner 1993: 190). Through the Freier Deutscher Kulturbund, in 47 fact, Klopfleisch even managed to exhibit some of her work in Rushen. However, a clay figurine of hers from this time, “Woman in Despair,” 48 testifies to the unhappiness of Klopfleisch’s internment experience. A water color she produced in 1941, “Internierungslager Isle of Man,” features a large barbed-wire fence dominating the foreground, with bleak hills beyond in an unapproachable and unpopulated landscape. In general, those internees who appear to have adjusted most easily to life in internment tended, as already intimated in this essay, to be the political exiles (although Klopfleisch herself was a committed Communist Party member). Members of all the exiled German Socialist groups, for example, were to be found in Rushen and, in the words of Erna Nelki, 49 “found each other” there. The influential Minna Specht and her following belonged to the ISK (Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund); other internees were associated with the exiled SPD, the SAP (Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei), or Neu Beginnen. One group of German socialists in the camp (including Käte Strobel, later Minister of Health in West Germany) had fled from Norway on the same ship as the Norwegian king, while among the interned Austrian socialists were Gertrud Magaziner and Margit Czernetz (wives of the leading party members Alfred Magaziner and Karl Czernetz). Although not permitted to establish any sort of overt political life in the camp, socialist internees could still offer each other solidarity as Nelki recalls: “Wir trafen uns, diskutierten die Lage, tauschten Nachrichten aus und sprachen uns Mut zu” (Nelki 1982: 54). In keeping with the generally poor relations prevailing between their parties, there was little political contact between the socialist and com50 munist women in internment, however. The communists for their part, were extremely active, as is clear from Emmy Koenen’s “Leben und Kampf im Frauenlager.” In it, she mentions twelve women in the KPD group in Rushen as well as Austrian and Sudeten German Party members and a few sympathizers. Since meetings were forbidden, the women had

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to devise other methods of keeping in contact, such as through conversations on the beach or while out walking. These occasions would be used to exchange information — from London, perhaps, or received via the men’s camps — or to discuss how to bring about the release of individual internees (advice on this was also obtained from noninterned comrades in the Czech Refugee Trust Fund in London). In addition, the KPD women circulated political reading matter, some of which Koenen had herself managed to bring into the camp on the strength of a letter 51 from the influential Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson (Koenen 1978: 882). Many of the political exiles devoted themselves to youth work, to attending to the large numbers of young girls who had been removed from their schools, families, or jobs and were now leading unstructured lives, “in rechter Gefahr, gründlich zu verbummeln unter den unkontrollierbaren Einflüssen der eigenartigen Atmosphäre,” as Leonhard puts it (1941: 3). Again, the Communists were particularly active here. Alice Michelson, who was in her twenties when interned and who herself came to play a major role in the communist youth work, has described how the more experienced comrades concerned themselves with the welfare of the younger internees, initially organizing gymnastics and English-language classes for them with the aim of building up “ein Stamm junger Mädchen und Frauen mit neuen Interessen und Begabungen” (Michelson 1996: 118). Such activities in Rushen, as in the men’s internment camps, were an extension of the work being carried out by the communist-controlled exile organizations Freie Deutsche Jugend and Young Austria (the youth groups of the Freier Deutscher Kulturbund and the Austrian Centre, respectively) on a countrywide basis. Michelson, for instance, recalls, good contacts with the FDJ outside the camp and particularly in London, from where parcels of clothing and food as well as copies of the FDJ’s eponymous journal would be sent, “die uns oft wertvolle Anregungen für unsere Aktivitäten gab” (120). Melitta Drucker published a review of one of these youth activities, namely a production by the Youth Players’ Group in which songs and dances from different nations were 52 performed. Both Drucker and Leonhard, too, pronounced themselves very encouraged by the girls’ performance, with the latter commenting in Die Zeitung: “Man ging sinnend am Meeresstrand nachhaus und hatte das sichere Gefühl, keine Entwurzelung, keine Politik kann diese Jugend beirren und zerstören.” Drucker, for her part, made the following telling comment: “Die Jugend, frisch und voll Zuversicht, verliert auch hinter Stacheldraht nicht den Mut. Was könnten diese Menschen erst draußen, in Freiheit, Gutes und Schönes schaffen” (Clarke 1972: 200).

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The political and intellectual exiles also played a crucial role with younger children, namely in the running of the camp schools (obviously an aspect of camp life that had no counterpart in the men’s camps). Most of Erna Nelki’s time in Port Erin was spent in teaching, in fact, which was carried out first in two hotels (until the landladies protested), then in J. Benson Harrison’s Methodist Church Hall (which proved too cramped), and finally, on 21 October 1940, in more suitable accommodation in the 53 Strand Café, a development that was greeted by the headmistress Inge Gurland in an article, “Three Cheers for Our School!” in the camp journal 54 Rushen Outlook (see also below). At Port St. Mary, meanwhile, the “vig55 orous, spirited and undefeatable” Minna Specht was also setting up a school at Cornan boarding house and at Cowley’s Café (it opened on 1 56 October 1940). There were, in addition, two kindergartens established in the camp as well as a special class for older children run by a British teacher from Douglas who prepared them for matriculation. Some of the children in the camp were severely disturbed as a result of their past experiences, others were running wild, and thus there was a great need for structured educational provision. Theo Naftel, who made her official visit to Rushen at New Year 1940/41, recorded that “everyone agreed that regular schooling has had a very beneficial effect on the children, they love school and are much brighter and less nervy since they 57 have not been in such constant contact with the adult life in the hotels.” Erna Nelki, too, judged the whole venture a success, both in educational and in psychological terms. Interestingly, in a piece in the ILP’s New Leader in 1941, she also recalled how a possible choice of futures, in England or in Germany, was taken into account in the educational planning: The outlook of the majority of the refugees on the Isle of Man was anti-German. The children often refused to speak German. Most of them wanted an English school, with an English curriculum and English ideals. We tried to give them that. But for those who were willing to play their part in building up a new free Germany, we tried to give the knowledge which will help 58 them in that task.

Dame Joanna Cruickshank was reportedly helpful in the matter of the 59 camp schools and indeed in all issues involving children. She was, however, distinctly discouraging when it came to establishing a Rushen camp journal along the lines of the ones that flourished in some of the men’s camps. When Minna Specht had opened the Port St. Mary school in October 1940, 60 she had announced that there were plans to publish a journal; this was probably a reference to Rushen Outlook of which only the first issue survives

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(the second did not get beyond the planning stage). The journal had an interesting mixture of editors, namely the communists Lotte Olbrisch and Anna Hornik, the socialists Gertrud Magaziner and Gerda Krautter, also Eugenie Cahen, Erika Stein, and the journalist Margot Strauss. Under “We Present,” the editors outlined the journal’s intentions to “create an atmosphere of tolerance and understanding in our camp,” to meet the need for an exchange of views “as far as possible under the present circumstances” and to provide a means of communication between the internees and the British authorities. It would aim to report on all internment issues as well as on matters of special interest within the camp and would, among other things, also welcome literary contributions and letters to the editor (2). While all this was in English, a further editorial statement, “Was wir wollen,” appeared in German and represented a cry from the heart: Abgeschieden von dem aktiven Geschehen, sollen wir doch leidenschaftlich an ihm teilnehmen. Damit nicht nach diesem Kriege die Entwicklung, die die Menschen “draußen” mitgemacht haben, für uns keine Wirklichkeit geworden ist, so daß wir uns dann in dem Leben, nach dem wir uns sehnen, genau so überflüssig fühlen würden, wie zuweilen jetzt. Um das zu erreichen, müssen wir auch hier wieder ein Gemeinschaftsleben mit allen Aufgaben und Pflichten aufbauen. Wie wollen nicht mit verbitterten Gesichtern herumlaufen. . . . Wir wollen einmal zeigen, daß wir die Kraft haben, uns aus dieser Energielosigkeit herauszukämpfen. Jede wird dann den besonderen Platz, an dem sie etwas leisten kann, finden. (3)

The first issue of Rushen Outlook also announced the items already planned for the next one — the educationalist Magda Kelber, for instance, on “Do you want to be educated?” and the economist and archivist Erna Simion on the history of the Isle of Man. This second issue failed to appear, however, because of the problems the editors encountered with the opening number, as Strauss recalls: A few of us who had worked on newspapers before got together, got up a very nice paper, what we thought was very nice, and sent it to the commandant for censorship. And she kept it for so long that by the time she gave her sort of reluctant consent it was too late to publish it because it was out of date. [Interviewer: And did you try again?] No we didn’t because it was a lot of work and inconvenient. You know, you had to come together during the little free time you had be61 cause you always had to be in at special times and if it took that long . . .

In addition, at least one issue of another journal, The Awful Times, must have appeared — though no copy of this has so far come to light —

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since an extract from this, billed as “Port Erin’s talented camp paper,” was reproduced in one of the men’s camp newspapers, the Onchan Pio62 neer, on 29 September 1940. A further news-sheet put together by women in the Bradda Private Hotel for New Year 1940/1941, bearing the ironic title of Pfingstbote, was reportedly produced without the 63 Commandant’s permission (Koenen 1978: 884). Emmy Koenen reports on a particularly dispiriting attempt to publish yet another camp journal, Der Frauenruf, by herself, a communist, and three other noncommunists (two of the latter being professional journalists). In so doing, they were keen to emulate the example of the male internees as well as to ensure that the women should be better informed. “Zudem wollten wir einer immer wieder auftauchenden Verzweiflung entgegenwirken,” she adds. A first issue was prepared containing information on matters of great importance to the readership — on the parliamentary debates on internment, for instance, and on the reported whereabouts of male internees — as well as a “Humorecke” for light relief. However the journal was rejected by Dame Joanna on three successive occasions and for varying reasons, the last of these being that “der Standpunkt der Frauen, die sich zum Nationalsozialismus bekannten, unberücksichtigt geblieben sei” (Koenen 1978: 884). The inappropriateness of such efforts to display evenhandedness towards all internee groups was highlighted in a report compiled by Margery Corbett Ashby after a visit to Rushen in late 1940 on behalf of the Friendly Aliens Protection Committee: The Camp Authorities are expected to allow no distinction between the various classes of the internees under their care; in consequence the antiNazis are asked to collaborate with those who persecuted them and drove them from their country. The refugees wished to publish a newspaper, but the usual difficulty has arisen. Nothing written in the paper must give offence to the Nazis, and the Camp Authorities assumed that it would be 64 possible for Nazis and anti-Nazis to share a common newspaper.

Theo Naftel, in her report written at very much the same time, takes the point one step further: [The anti-Nazi internees] could not understand . . . the suggestion that if a Camp newspaper was to appear at all it must not be one-sided and should be run jointly by Nazis and democrats. My personal view is that such a collaboration would be utterly impossible and indeed that any propaganda by democratic groups against Nazi theory and practice should be definitely encouraged and refugees made to feel that efforts on 65 their part to foster democratic ideals in the camp would be welcomed.

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That camp life could be conducive to forms of writing beyond journalism is illustrated by the case of Livia Laurent: Laurent, writing poetry in English on her internment experience (and apparently with the encouragement of the Deputy Commandant Miss Looker), managed in some way that even the Home Office itself was unable to understand to get her poems through the censor and into the Poetry Review of 66 May/June 1941. While she remained interned she was prevented from 67 repeating her success. However, following her release in August 1941, Laurent promptly published further poems from and concerning intern68 ment: in the Poetry Review, once again, and also in a small collection of 69 her verse in 1942. In addition, there are further poems punctuating the prose narrative in her A Tale of Internment of the same year. Laurent defines the aim of her memoir as “to describe the time I spent away from war, yet singularly part of it in the exile of internment” (Laurent 1942: 8). “The exile of internment” is a curious phrase from a woman already in a state of exile, suggesting perhaps that internment represented a kind of second or twofold exile for her, an exile within exile. Prior to internment, she had wished to play her part in the war effort, she recalls, indeed she had greater reason for this than most, for she “knew her place in this war with greater certainty and conviction than many people who by birth and inheritance belonged to the country of her refuge, because to her the evil which was to be stamped out was no tale of horror but actual experience” (11). One of the interpolated poems explores her response to her enforced exclusion from the mainstream of events: she would make what she could of the possibilities for thought and self-development that internment offered while at the same time holding herself in readiness for war service as a sort of relief force: The time of your trial Is time of my reflection. The time of your waste Is time of my reserve. Where you lose yourself I will find myself. Both ways equally hard. But when you are tired And your hand grows weary of your stern task I will be there To fill the breach And carry on where you left off. 70 And I rejoice.

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Laurent, publishing in wartime, adopts a conciliatory tone towards her British captors and the policy of internment; while leaving her readers in no doubt that internment constituted an ordeal, a Tale of Internment is in fact a whimsical, even humorous account of her tribulations. It is reported that a similar approach was intended to be followed in Anna Thilo, the largely autobiographical account of experiences in Holloway and on the Isle of Man that Ruth Borchard embarked on shortly after her release (but that was never completed). Though, as Borchard remarks to Seyfert, the novel was to deal with “all the funny and not so funny problems in the internment” (Seyfert 1984: 191), it was to be restrained in its criticism of the British and indeed to stress the mutuality of suffering between the refugees and the British in wartime (129). In her introduction to A Tale of Internment, Laurent goes out of her way to stress that she has not been embittered by her experiences (8), as does, notably, Erna Nelki who, writing many years after the war, could other71 wise afford to adopt a generally more critical tone. Of the internment accounts, both written and oral, that I have considered in this essay, the most condemnatory of the British authorities, and in particular of their apparent sufferance of the Nazi elements in the camp, is Emmy Koenen’s “Leben und Kampf im Frauenlager.” Since it appeared, exceptionally, in the German Democratic Republic to which Koenen had returned after the war, this is not especially surprising. However, we should remember that the internment period, which was also the time of the Hitler-Stalin pact, was a testing one for communists in Britain, and even more so for communist refugees. In Rushen, moreover, the communists felt themselves to be particularly disadvantaged because of the hostility reportedly directed at them by Dame Joanna Cruickshank. That being said, Koenen’s memoir is by no means negative where the British as a whole are concerned; on the contrary, she acknowledges that the general protest against mass alien internment “erfaßte breiteste Schichten Großbritannens,” offering the following example of international solidarity as one that moved her deeply: Wochen vor meiner Entlassung enthielt ich ein Päckchen von einigen englischen Frauen, die mir sämtlich unbekannt waren [. . .] Londoner Frauen hatten von englischen Genossinnen meine Adresse erhalten und während der Bombenangriffe auf London, tief im U-Bahnschacht aus hunderten Resten eine große Wolldecke gestickt. Dabei lagen folgende Zeilen: Sie wollen damit zum Ausdruck bringen, daß sie die Politik ihrer Regierung gegen die deutschen Antifaschisten zutiefst verurteilen. (Koenen 1978: 887)

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Dame Joanna’s frequently criticized lack of understanding of the complexities of the German situation was certainly one of the factors that led to her replacement as Commandant in May 1941. On the other hand, Home Office documents reveal that at least one of the charges repeatedly leveled against her, namely that she had failed to control the interned Nazi protagonist Wanda Wehrhan, was unfounded: Dame Joanna had asked for Frau Wehrhan — who was engaging in both political propaganda and intimidation within the camp — to be removed to Holloway but her request had been turned down on the grounds that it could lead to repri72 sals against British internees in Germany. But by May 1941, in any case, the review process was already well underway, with most of the internees mentioned in this essay, as genuine refugees from Nazism, being released then or soon after. In May 1941, too, the Married Camp was established, initially in Port St. Mary, which improved the situation for interned married couples and their children. The numbers of internees on the Isle of Man, both male and female, steadily declined, though Rushen Camp was not finally closed down until September 1945. Dame Joanna’s successor as Commandant, Inspector C. R. Cuthbert, concludes in his final report on the Women’s Camp, compiled in 1947, that the regime there had been a humane one, with internees being treated “in no way as suspected persons, but only as human beings temporarily detained because of external circumstances over which they had no control.” He goes further: My earnest hope is that it will never be necessary to again effect an internment policy of women, children and families but should it be necessary H.M. Government can do little better than repeat what was accomplished at Port Erin and Port St. Mary on the Isle of Man from 73 1940 to 1945.

Writing at a distance of some forty years from the events under discussion and obviously from a quite different standpoint, Erna Nelki, for her part, draws up a balance sheet of both the positive and the negative aspects of the internment experience. On the negative side, the internment measures of May and June 1940, carried out “regardless of . . . refugee status,” gave rise to “much despair, unhappiness and personal tragedies,” while the failure of the Camp Authorities to distinguish between Nazi and non-Nazi internees “turned the first months of internment into a nightmare.” On the positive side, she concedes, it provided women with opportunities to show “courage, enterprise and responsibility” and also enriched their lives both in terms of personal relationships and intellectual development. “However,” she concludes, “it remains to be said that internment was not

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only cruel but wrong. It can only be excused as a panic measure after the 74 collapse of the continental frontline of war.” Louise Leonhard published her “Frauen im Internment Camp” as early as July 1941, that is under wartime conditions of official censorship and refugee restraint. At the end of her Die Zeitung article, having run through the activities and achievements she observed in Rushen, she stresses that it is her brief here to examine only the positive aspects of internment, a stance reflected in the subtitle to her piece, “Von Versuchen, aus einer Not eine Tugend zu machen.” Only in her final lines does Leonhard venture to consider the nature of the “Not” itself, proceeding from that to an impassioned plea for the release of those women still unjustly interned and, moreover, prevented by their internment from making their contribution to the common antifascist cause: Denn Not war es, aus der die Tugend wuchs, Stacheldraht umgab uns, und der Druck der Unfreiheit lastete schwer . . . Not war es, und viel seelische und körperliche Not umfängt auch noch heute eine große Zahl, die unverdient noch immer hinter Stacheldraht sitzen und ihre Tugenden, ihr Können und Leisten lieber in den Dienst der allgemeinen Sache stellen würden, für die wir alle leiden und kämpfen. (Leonhard 1941: 3)

Notes 1

The quotations in the title are from two sources that are referred to extensively later in the essay: the first is from Livia Laurent’s [pseud. Eva Meyerhof] A Tale of Internment (London: Allen and Unwin, 1942), 8; the second is from Louise Leonhard's “Frauen im Internment Camp: Von Versuchen, aus einer Not eine Tugend zu Machen,” Die Zeitung (1 July 1941): 3. I should like to express my thanks to the following for the help and information they have given me in writing this article: the Public Record Office, Kew; the Imperial War Museum, London; the Institute of Germanic Studies, London; Lambeth Palace Library, London; the Library of the Religious Society of Friends, London; the Fawcett Library, London Guildhall University; the Wiener Library, London; the Jewish Refugees Committee, London; the Manx National Heritage, Douglas, Isle of Man; the Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes, Vienna; the Dokumentationsstelle für neuere österreichische Literatur, Literaturhaus, Vienna; and the Deutsches Exilarchiv, Deutsche Bibliothek, Frankfurt a. M. I am also grateful to Mrs. Anna Bill-Jentzsch, the late Dr. Ruth Borchard, Mr. Peter Michael Braunwarth, Ms. Victoria Brinson, Ms. Yvonne Cresswell, Mr. Walter Goddard, Dr. Ruth Herring, Dr. Stefan Howald, Mr. Hanns Lange, Mrs. Betty Lewis, Mrs. Johanna Metzger-Lichtenstern, Mrs. Susan Moroney, Mrs. Erna Nelki, the late Mrs. Irmgard Payne, Dr. Michael Seyfert, and Mrs. Joanna Yehiel for their kind advice and assistance.

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2

4000 is the figure cited in most sources. However a figure of 5000 is given in the report by Inspector C. R. Cuthbert, “The Internment of Women, Children and Married Couples in the Isle of Man 1940–45,” dated 9 June 1947, Public Record Office [PRO], HO 213/1053. 3

Though the following are helpful, either generally, or specifically with regard to the internment of women: Lafitte (1940); Gillman and Gillman (1980); Stent (1980), especially Chapter 12; and Brinson (1998). 4

This was the figure Sir John Anderson gave to the House of Commons on February 1, 1940 (Hansard, HC, vol. 356, col. 1270). See, however, Anderson’s memorandum “Control of Aliens” of 29 April 1940, in which a figure of “about 300” is cited, PRO, CAB 67/6, WP (G) (40) 115. 5 Janstein’s prison diary of August 30 to October 15, 1939, referred to as “Holloway Journal” in her correspondence, is in fact untitled. It is held at the Dokumentationsstelle für neuere österreichische Literatur, Literaturhaus, Vienna, Handschriftensammlung, Nachlaß Martina Wied (Inv. Nr. NI 42/4.1.1). 6

This was Nelki’s own assumption, as stated in an interview with the author, 25 May 1999. As for Janstein, she had made herself unpopular among émigré journalists, certainly, through her involvement, as Austrian delegate, with the Fédération Internationale des Journalistes (see Brinson and Malet 1990: 268). 7

Memorandum, “Invasion of Great Britain: Possible Cooperation by a Fifth Column,” PRO, CAB 67/6, WP (G) (40) 131. 8 Dated 14 May 1940, in PRO, FO 371/25189. 9

Hansard, HC, vol. 361, col. 294, 23 May 1940.

10

The invalid and infirm, those in an advanced stage of pregnancy or with a dangerously ill child were to be exempted. Mothers were permitted to take children under the age of sixteen with them, if they wished. 11

Interview with Ruth Herring, 4 August 1994, transcript held at the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, Institute of Germanic Studies, London.

12

Lina Thomas [i.e. Ruth Borchard], “The Reception,” in Schimanski and Treece (1944: 46–56). This extract from Borchard’s unfinished novel “Anna Thilo” is the only part of the work to have been published. 13

Though see Cuthbert Report, which claimed a maximum capacity of 4000 and 1200 for Port Erin and Port St. Mary respectively (PRO, HO 213/1053). 14 Bell, in fact, visited the women of Rushen on 28 and 31 July 1940, and assured them they were not forgotten by their friends outside the camp and noted down details of individual problems that he attempted to address (see Bishop Bell Papers, Lambeth Palace Library, London, vol. 33). 15

The presence of Nazi elements constituted a greater problem in the women’s camp than in the men’s camps on the Isle of Man, for two reasons: first because fascist sympathizers were effectively outweighed by the large numbers of category “C” internees in the men’s camps, and second because they would in any case have been subject to deportation (a policy not extended to women internees). 16

See, for example, “Pleasures of Internment: Aliens’ Holiday in Isle of Man,’’ Daily Telegraph (6 June 1940): 5. On the same day, Sir John Wardlaw-Milne MP drew the

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House of Commons’ attention to the “considerable public resentment” on this issue (Hansard, HC, vol. 361, col. 1005, 6 June 1940). 17

The matter was even raised in the House of Lords Debate of 6 August 1940 by Lord Farringdon (Hansard, HL, vol. 117, col. 116). 18

Brigitte Jacobs-Davies, “Civilian Internment in Britain 1939–1945,” Imperial War Museum [IWM], Department of Sound Records, 004438. 19

Ira Rischowki [Irene], “Civilian Internment in Britain 1939–1945,” IWM, Department of Sound Records, 004296. 20

Unlike the women, interned men had the chance of earning a limited amount of money on a regular basis. 21

See Anna Hornik, “Camp ‘W’ Isle of Man — Service Exchange: Final Report: From 20th September 1940–17th November 1941,” 12 January 1942, Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstandes, Vienna [DÖW], 3428. 22

Hornik (1942: 4).

23

Hornik (1942: 1, 2 and 4).

24

Harriet Karthäuser-Albu, “Civilian Internment in Britain 1939–1945,” IWM, Department of Sound Records, 004471. 25

Home Office to Friendly Aliens Protection Committee, 10 March 1941, PRO, HO 215/336. Nevertheless, see in the Cuthbert Report the comment (applying less to the first period of the camp’s existence and more to the later period) that in light of the excellent educational opportunities on offer it was “remarkable that so few attended the classes” (PRO, HO 213/1053).

26

J. R. Bruce was in fact the naturalist-in-charge but was acting for the director while the latter was away on war work. 27

See Jacobs-Davies interview, “Civilian Internment in Britain 1939–1945.”

28

“54th Report for 1941,” in Annual Reports for 1941–44 (Nos. 54–57) of the Marine Biological Station at Port Erin, Isle of Man (Liverpool: UP of Liverpool, 1946), 7. 29 The Cuthbert Report records that the library consisted of around 5000 volumes, about one third of them in German, which were mostly supplied by the YMCA and the British Council or were on loan from the Central Library, Douglas (PRO, HO 213/1053). According to Erna Nelki and Ira Rischowski, Ilse Gostinsky also worked as a librarian in Rushen. 30

Theo Naftel, Secretary, International Cooperative Women’s Guild, “Report on Visit to the Women’s Internment Camp in the Isle of Man, January 1941,” held in Margery Corbett Ashby Papers, Fawcett Library, London Guildhall University, MICA/A96, Box 486. 31

Alan Clarke cites the example of “Luise Astmanns aktuelles Inselstück in klassischem Gewand ‘Geographie und Liebe,’” in his doctoral dissertation “Die Rolle des ‘Freien Deutschen Kulturbundes in Großbritannien’ im Kampf gegen den deutschen Faschismus 1938–1947” (1972: 200). 32

Strauss-Pottlitzer, Margot. “Civilian Internment in Britain 1939–1945.” IWM, Department of Sound Records, 003816. 33 Held at IWM, 81/10/1.

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See Jacobs-Davies interview, “Civilian Internment in Britain 1939–1945,” 50.

35

See Lange, Irma. “Ein Blatt im Winde: Lebensbericht.” Unpublished MSS, Deutsches Exilarchiv, Deutsche Bibliothek, Frankfurt am Main, 263. 36

Unpublished MSS, in the private possession of Johanna Metzger-Lichtenstern.

37

Interview with Johanna Metzger-Lichtenstern, 13 September 2000.

38

“Sister Emmeline Cheshire: Methodist Deaconess to Work Among Internees: Appreciation of Rev. J. B. Harrison’s Work,” Isle of Man Examiner (6 September 1940): 6. 39

See “Rushen.” Isle of Man Examiner (4 October 1940): 6.

40

“United Sisterhood,” Isle of Man Examiner (4 October 1940): 6

41

Barbara Isralowitz-Eaton. “Civilian Internment in Britain 1939–1945,” IWM, Department of Sound Records, 004380. 42

Metzger-Lichtenstern interview.

43

In Rischowski papers, IWM, 81/10/1. I am grateful to Susan Moroney for alerting me to the existence of this drawing. 44

See, for example, Rischowski Interview.

45

Jacobs-Davies interview, “Civilian Internment in Britain 1939–1945.”

46

“Women Internees in Isle of Man: Interview with Dame Joanna Cruickshank,” Manchester Guardian (23 November 1940): 9. 47

See Margarete Klopfleisch (1911–1982): An Exhibition of Sculpture and Works on Paper (London: John Denham Gallery, 1987), [27]. 48

For her particularly distressing personal circumstances at this time, see also Margarete Klopfleisch (1911–1982): An Exhibition of Sculpture and Works on Paper, [5].

49

Nelki interview.

50

Nelki Interview.

51

For the Wilkinson letter, see Koenen (1978: 880). As reported in Koenen (1978: 885). According to Clarke (1972: 200), the review, “Youth Players in Port Erin” by “Lita,” appeared in a pamphlet, Aus Port Erin, in September 1941. 52

53 Erna Nelki, “Interned — but we started a school!” The New Leader (4 October 1941): 7. 54

Rushen Outlook. No. 1 (December 1940): 4 (held at DÖW 3845).

55

As described by Erna Nelki in “The Internment of Women in England, 1940.” Typescript, 1980, IWM 84/50/1, 11. 56

See, for example, “Internees’ Camp School Opened: Comprehensive Scheme of Instruction.” Isle of Man Examiner (4 October 1940): 6. 57

Naftel, “Report on Visit to the Women’s Internment Camp in the Isle of Man.”

58

Nelki, “Interned — but we started a school!”

59

See, for example, Rischowski Interview.

60

See “Internees’ Camp School Opened.” Isle of Man Examiner (4 October 1940): 6.

61

Strauss-Pottlitzer interview.

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62

“Bath Regulations in the Hotel Majestic.” Reproduced from The Awful Times in Onchan Pioneer (29 September 1940): 4. 63

In addition, there are references in Freie Deutsche Jugend to the “Wall-newspaper in the Women’s Internment Camp Port Erin.” See, for example, “‘Our’ Field.” Vol. 3, no. 23 (10 June 1941): 2. 64

“Nazis with the Refugee Women in the Internment Camp.” 1 January 1941, PRO, FO 371/29173. 65 Naftel, “Report on Visit to the Women’s Internment Camp in the Isle of Man.” 66

The episode is documented in PRO, HO 215/433. Three poems appeared under the general heading “From an Internment Camp,” The Poetry Review 32:3 (1941): 133–35. 67

See Home Office (W. J. Paddon) to Marc Wilenkin, 14 August 1941 (PRO, HO 215/433). Compare here the case of the male internee Fritz Wolff whose article, “To destroy Hitlerism,” appeared in the Contemporary Review 159 (January 1941): 73–77, before further publications of his were forbidden (PRO, HO 215/432). 68

“Portrait of a Lady Knitting” appeared in the Poetry Review 32:6 (November/December 1941): 371.

69

Livia Laurent, Poems (London: The Favil Press, 1942), [39 pages].

70

Extract from untitled poem, in A Tale of Internment (1942: 50).

71

The concluding section of Nelki’s “Eingesperrt im englischen Frauenlager” is actually entitled “Wir sind nicht verbittert.” 72

On this, see, inter alia, PRO, HO 215/405.

73

PRO, HO 213/1053.

74

Nelki, “The Internment of Women in England, 1940,” IWM 84/50/1, 12.

Works Cited Borchard, Ruth. The Service Exchange in an Internment Camp. London: Friends’ Book Centre, 1943. Brinson, Charmian. “A Woman’s Place . . .? German-Speaking Women in Exile in Britain, 1933–1945.” German Life and Letters 51 (1998): 204–24. Brinson, Charmian, and Marian Malet, eds. Rettet Ossietzky! Dokumente aus dem Nachlaß von Rudolf Olden. Oldenburg: Bis, 1990. Cesarani, David and Tony Kushner, eds. The Internment of Aliens in Twentieth Century Britain. London: Cass, 1993. Clarke, Alan. “Die Rolle des ‘Freien Deutschen Kulturbundes in Großbritannien’ im Kampf gegen den deutschen Faschismus 1938–1947: Ein Beitrag zur Untersuchung des deutschen antifaschistischen Exiltheaters.” Ph.D. diss. Berlin, 1972. Gillman, Peter and Leni. “Collar the Lot!” How Britain Interned and Expelled its Wartime Refugees. London: Quartet, 1980.

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Kochan, Miriam. Britain’s Internees in the Second World War. London/ Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1983. Koenen, Emmy. “Exil in England; Leben und Kampf im Frauenlager.” Beiträge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung 20 (1978): 884. Lafitte, Francois. The Internment of Aliens. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1940. Laurent, Livia [Eva Meyerhof]. A Tale of Internment. London: Allen and Unwin, 1942. Leonhard, Louise. “Frauen im Internment Camp: Von Versuchen, aus einer Not eine Tugend zu machen.” Die Zeitung (1 July 1941): 3. Michaelis-Jena, Ruth. Heritage of the Kaiser’s Children. Edinburgh: Canongate, 1983. Michelson, Alice. “Interniert im Frauenlager Isle of Man.” In Das war unser Leben: Erinnerungen und Dokumente zur Geschichte der Freien Deutschen Jugend in Großbritannien 1939–1946, ed. Alfred Fleischhacker. Berlin: Verlag Neues Leben, 1996. Nelki, Erna. “Autobiographie einer politischen Emigrantin.” In Eine stumme Generation berichtet: Frauen der dreißiger und vierziger Jahre, ed. Gisela Dischner. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1982, 29–62. ———. “Eingesperrt im englischen Frauenlager.” In Sie flohen vor dem Hakenkreuz: Selbstzeugnisse der Emigranten: Ein Lesebuch für Deutsche, ed. Walter Zadek. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1981. Schimanski, Stefan, and Henry Treece, eds. A Map of Hearts. London: Lindsay Drummond, 1944. Seyfert, Michael. Im Niemandsland: Deutsche Exilliteratur in britischer Internierung: Ein unbekanntes Kapitel der Kulturgeschichte des Zweiten Weltkriegs. Berlin: Das Arsenal, 1984. Spiro, Anna. Years to Remember. N.p., 1988. Stent, Ronald. A Bespattered Page? The Internment of his Majesty’s “most loyal enemy aliens.” London: Deutsch, 1980. Thomas, Lina [Ruth Borchard]. “The Reception.” In Schimanski, Stefan and Henry Treece, eds. A Map of Hearts. London: Lindsay Drummond, 1944, 46–56.

“Deutschland lebt an der Nahtstelle, an der Bruchstelle”: Literature and Politics in Germany 1933–1950 David Basker

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HE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN literature and politics in twentiethcentury Germany is close and fascinating. In the course of the century the German nation passed through a series of huge political upheavals, each of which involved a public redefinition of what was politically, and even morally, acceptable in the present, measured against the immediate past. While the old imperial elites sought, more or less successfully, to resist such a redefinition under the parliamentary democracy of the Weimar Republic after the First World War, from 1933 the process of Gleichschaltung in the Nazi state ensured that new categories of what was politically acceptable were vigorously enforced. The collapse of National Socialism involved a similar about-face: in the immediate postwar years, Allied denazification strategies meant that those who had risen to positions of power before 1945 by enthusiastically following one political creed risked losing all after 1945, when that creed was proscribed. The outbreak of the Cold War quickly altered the acceptability of these political categories too, as heroes of Nazi resistance became figures of suspicion in the midst of West German paranoia about “Reds under the bed”; and in East Germany, simply maintaining contact with friends and family in the West was enough to attract the unwanted attention of the Stasi. Towards the end of the century, the process of unification of the two German states brought a strikingly similar set of effects, especially to the citizens of the former GDR. The old political structures of the communist bloc have not just disappeared, they have also been widely discredited, with the result that those who supported them have faced public vilification. The revelations surrounding the extent to which the Stasi had enlisted the help of ordinary people in assuring loyalty to the state are just the last in a series of events in the twentieth century which have successively left Germans in a position where past and present are at odds and where the transition from one to the other is problematic.

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That literary culture should have reflected these changes is, to some extent, inevitable; yet the relationship between German politics and literature is more complex than this suggests, for two reasons. In the first place, the specific details of the upheavals that have befallen Germany in the twentieth century mean that literature not only has served as a barometer of change, but has also been manipulated as an instrument in such change. The way in which the radical politicization of the Nazi state brought about a hijacking of the role of the writer and the function of art is one obvious case in point; the constraints of the East German brand of Socialist Realism, Bitterfelder Weg and all, is another. In part as a result of these experiences, even under circumstances where political commitment has not been a prerequisite of a career in literature, successive German states of the twentieth century triggered a literary culture that engaged with contemporary politics in a way which is not normally part of the Anglo-Saxon tradition. One need only think in this context of Günter Grass’s pronouncements of the 1990s on the Federal Republic’s system of granting asylum, or of Martin Walser’s on the relationship of the present to the Nazi past; and the post-unification Literaturstreit had a number of peculiarly German features in its concern with the relationship between politics and literature. In the second place, it is easy to overlook in the literary sphere the fact that, despite the momentous nature of the changes that took place in Germany in the twentieth century, certain fundamental continuities obtained. This is particularly the case in what is perhaps the most tumultuous change of all: the collapse of the Nazi state, caught up as it is with the physical devastation of war, the moral bankruptcy of the outgoing regime, and the urgent need to reconstruct after 1945 against the background of growing superpower tension. In the first part of this chapter I will offer an overview of the main developments which the period on either side of Hitler’s demise brought to literary culture in the political context, with a particular focus on continuities — in institutional control and personnel, for example — across the traditional divide of 1945. In the second part I will provide a case study of the career over this period of one author, Wolfgang Koeppen, as an illustration of some of the issues raised by the interplay between German literature and politics from 1933 to the early 1950s.

Literature Under Hitler The Hitler dictatorship’s attempts to politicize all areas of society did not, of course, leave literary culture untouched. As in other areas, control

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of culture came through the open politicization of existing bodies, Gleichschaltung, and the establishment of new bureaucratic systems to ensure, in theory at least, that the Nazi party line was being toed. In the former category, Goebbels moved quickly in 1933 to turn the Schutzverband Deutscher Schriftsteller and the Sektion für Dichtkunst der Preußischen Akademie der Dichtung into pro-Nazi organizations; the Prussian Academy was turned into the Deutsche Akademie der Dichtung and those writers who were not prepared to swear allegiance to the state (Thomas Mann, Alfred Döblin, Ricarda Huch, among others) had their membership revoked and were replaced by Nazi supporters. In the latter category, the pattern of overlapping competencies of new key government and party agencies obtained, as it did elsewhere. Thus, the Reichsschrifttumskammer, the Reichsstelle zur Förderung des deutschen 1 Schrifttums, and the Parteiamtliche Prüfungskommission zum Schutze 2 des NS-Schrifttums competed with each other for control of areas of literary output inside Nazi Germany. The Reichsschrifttumskammer, in particular, sought to control all aspects of the world of literature. Founded as part of Josef Goebbels’s Reichskulturkammer under a law of 22 September 1933, the Reichsschrifttumskammer kept watch not only over writers and what they wrote, but over the German book industry as a whole: publishing houses, literary agencies, and libraries also fell under its auspices. Under its first president Hans Friedrich Blunck, and then, from 1935, under its second and last, the playwright Hanns Johst, the Reichsschrifttumskammer developed a bureaucratic system which sought to intervene in all areas of literary culture. For authors, the right to continue publishing after September 1933 was dependent on membership in the Reichsschrifttumskammer; and application for membership involved completing an exhaustive set of forms detailing personal and political background and confirming family history over several generations. As in other areas of the state, the attempt to impose an all-embracing system of this kind led to some inconsistencies, particularly in the early period of the Reichsschrifttumskammer’s existence. Initially, for example, there was uncertainty among the Reichsschrifttumskammer’s officials about how to treat famous writers who failed the “Aryan” test, with some surprising results: by the beginning of 1934 some 420 members who would not have met the usual Nazi criteria of racial purity had been admitted to the Reichsschrifttumskammer. From the second half of 1934, however, the system ran more consistently and all members whose background did not fit the Aryan prescriptions were forced out of the Reichsschrifttumskammer, 3 regardless of reputation.

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That the control of culture, in particular of literature, was a high priority for the Nazi state is evident not only from the speed with which this elaborate bureaucracy was established, but also from the rapidly organized and vigorous public campaign waged against writing that was perceived as unacceptable, even before the Reichsschrifttumskammer came into being. As early as 23 March 1933, Hitler gave an ominous speech outlining the need for a “durchgreifende Sanierung” of German culture. Accordingly, in the early months of the regime the public expression of literary judgment underwent radical politicization through the “Aktion wider den undeutschen Geist,” organized by the pro-Nazi Deutsche Studentenschaft and NS-Deutscher Studentenbund, with assistance from the Kampfbund für Deutsche Kultur and an uncertain amount of encouragement from Goebbels (see Ritchie 1988: 627). As part of the “Aktion,” through the first months of 1933 newspapers began to publish “schwarze Listen” of those whose works were not deemed “German” enough to be freely available in the new Reich (the Völkischer Beobachter, in fact, had published its first list of writers who should be banned as early as August 1932). The “schwarze Listen” led to “weiße Listen” of those whose works were approved. Acting on these criteria, students removed offending material from libraries and bookshops, with force where necessary. The campaign reached its notorious climax on the Opernplatz in Berlin on 10 May 1933 with the “spontaneous” public burning of books by newly prohibited authors, at which Goebbels held 4 the keynote speech. By means of this two-pronged approach — setting up a bureaucratic system to control the production of literature and manipulating public opinion against certain types of writers — the Nazi state quickly established categories of what was, and what was not, acceptable in literature at either end of a spectrum determined ultimately by political considerations. These considerations were applied both to the author personally and to his or her work. Thus, at one end, a writer might find himself or herself banned on the grounds of straightforward political allegiance (KPD or SPD membership for example), of politically determined racial categories (being Jewish, in particular, non-Aryan in general), or of considerations of literary form, which themselves took on political meaning through the attack on the perceived degeneracy of Weimar Republic aesthetics, not least through designations such as “Kulturbolschewismus” and “entartete Kunst.” The list of those whose works were prohibited included the living and the dead, and some writers fell afoul of all three strictures. As in other areas of the Nazi state, despite a bureaucratic façade that gave the impression that there were proper and

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logical channels to the decision-making process, the power of the official party and state organizations to ban writers’ works was absolute and could therefore be exercised in an arbitrary way. Communists, Jews, political opponents of the Nazis and writers of the avant-garde who wanted to continue publishing — and, ultimately, continue living — after 1933 had little choice but to go into exile. At the other end of the officially redrawn spectrum of German literature stood writing that fell into line with Nazi cultural policy. Features of this type of writing included a tendentious reading of German history, emphasizing nationalist success and international conspiracy against Germany; the glorification of the German countryside, the German worker and, in particular, the German farmer; an idealized view of the family unit, especially of the mother as child-bearer; the apotheosis of the Führer; and, especially as war approached, a celebration of military values and the strength and bravery of the German soldier. These features combined in various mixtures and in different genres to constitute so-called “Blut- und Bodenliteratur.” This type of writing had, of course, existed before 1933 but it had been overshadowed, at least as far as international reputations were concerned, by the work of German expressionists and by established literary figures of a bourgeois-liberal tradition, such as the Mann brothers. Now the achievements of Weimar were reassessed by those in power, with the result that the works of writers such as Hans Grimm, Hanns Johst, Heinrich Anacker, and Edwin Erich Dwinger were promoted as prime examples of what German writing should be. Between the two ends of this scale of acceptability — works by authors who were specifically banned by the Nazis at one end and works by authors who espoused Nazi values in their writing at the other — there emerged a considerable gray area, the existence of which runs counter to any notion of a monolithic state apparatus promoting only pro-Nazi literature. The critic Hans-Dieter Schäfer, in particular, has demonstrated not only that the elaborate mechanisms of censorship set up by the Nazis did not always work very well, but also that it was entirely possible to begin or maintain a literary career by writing in a way which, apparently at least, did not engage with National Socialist ideology. Into this area fall writers whose credentials were sound enough to allow membership in the Reichsschrifttumskammer, but who maintained a distance from the regime, withdrew from politics entirely, or concealed their distaste for Nazi practices. It is the interpretation of the works of these writers, normally described as “inner emigrants,” that is the most problematic from the point of view of the relationship between literature and politics in the Nazi period.

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To begin with, the term “innere Emigration,” probably first coined by the author Frank Thieß in 1933 to describe writers like himself who remained in Germany but withdrew in their works into a private sphere away from contemporary politics, has come to cover a wide range of authors representing very different attitudes towards the Nazi state. It is possible, of course, to argue that, in a state that attempted to politicize all walks of life in such a radical way, any author, simply by not writing according to the officially approved pattern of “Blut- und Bodenliteratur,” could be 5 expressing a kind of passive resistance. It is, however, difficult to identify clear political connections between the Third Reich and, for example, the nature poetry of the Kolonne group (Günter Eich, Eberhard Meckel, Peter Huchel, Martin Raschke, among others), which was published without hindrance from the Nazi censor. At the same time, the term “innere Emigration” is also applied to the works of writers such as Werner Bergengruen (Der Großtyrann und das Gericht, 1935) and, in particular, Ernst Jünger (Auf den Marmorklippen, 1939), works which it is possible to interpret as making encoded criticisms of the Nazi regime. Of course, the task of reading between the lines of a text to identify a hidden significance is in any case an enterprise fraught with difficulty; in this specific case, the waters were muddied further by the retrospective claims of some writers, hoping to rescue their reputations once the regime had collapsed, that their texts had expressed such concealed criticism. It is this complex, often contradictory, relationship between the writing of inner emigration and the political circumstances of the Third Reich that makes it a fascinating subject of study.

Literature in the Postwar Period Literature throughout the Third Reich was thus, inevitably, politicized according to a sliding scale, with attitudes of resistance and enthusiasm towards the regime at either end. Moving on to the postwar period, the fact that the act of writing inside the Third Reich was inextricably bound up with political and moral issues was confirmed by the debate that raged following the collapse of the dictatorship between exile writers and those who had stayed inside Germany. This debate found two antagonistic spokesmen in Thomas Mann for the exiles and Frank Thieß for the inner emigrants. In response to an open letter of 1945 from Walter von Molo (himself an inner emigrant) inviting him to return to Germany and contribute to its rebuilding, Thomas Mann famously expressed a commitment to his new life in the United States: “Ja, Deutschland ist in all diesen Jahren doch recht fremd geworden. Es ist, das müssen Sie zuge-

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ben, ein beängstigendes Land” (1965: 649). On the subject of the writing of those who had remained inside Germany, Mann is categorical in his response to von Molo: “Es mag Aberglaube sein, aber in meinen Augen sind Bücher, die von 1933 bis 1945 in Deutschland überhaupt gedruckt werden konnten, weniger als wertlos und nicht gut in die Hand zu nehmen. Ein Geruch von Blut und Schande haftet ihnen an; sie sollten alle eingestampft werden” (649). Frank Thieß then published a forceful response to Mann’s position with his article “Die innere Emigration” (1945), in which he attempted to claim the moral high-ground for those writers who, like Thieß himself, had remained loyal to a notion of Germany that stood above the unpleasantness of recent politics. There is more than a suspicion that this was an attempt at moral selfjustification on the part of an author who had himself published a novel 6 in 1934 with a “Grußwort” to the leaders of the new regime. The debate between the camps of the exiles and the inner emigrants, sparked only six months after the end of the Second World War, already points to certain continuities in literary culture that spill across the political collapse of 8 May 1945. The categories of writing that emerged in response to the system of the Third Reich are used to debate where German literature stands after its collapse. At the same time, the immediate postwar literary scene was marked by a number of notable calls for a new beginning; indeed, the perception that 1945 represented a “Stunde Null,” from which German literature could begin again, was propagated not only by writers but, even into the 1970s, by literary critics and historians too. What emerges on closer inspection, however, is a contradiction between the contention that literary culture was beginning from scratch in Germany and the fact that nearly all the writers who enjoyed public and critical success in the occupation period — and even into the 1950s — had been writing before 1945. Examples of the affirmation that the past could be cast off and writing could begin from scratch were numerous and characterized the approach of writers who are normally designated as belonging to a “junge Generation”: Alfred Andersch, Günter Eich, Marieluise Fleisser, Peter Huchel, Walter Kolbenhoff, Hans Werner Richter, and Wolfdietrich Schnurre, among others. In his “Nachwort” to Tausend Gramm, for example, an anthology of new short stories first published in 1949, Wolfgang Weyrauch famously characterized the sense of a new beginning as a “Kahlschlag in unserem Dickicht”: “In der gegenwärtigen deutschen Prosa sind mehrere Schriftsteller erschienen, die versuchen, unsre blinden Augen sehend, unsre tauben Ohren hörend und unsre schreienden Münder artikuliert zu machen” (178). In the same context, Alfred Andersch and Hans Werner Richter became in 1946 joint editors of the Munich

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version of the literary journal Der Ruf, the subtitle of which — unabhängige Blätter der jungen Generation — itself hinted at an attempt to establish a role for writers of their sort in the reshaping of German politics. For Andersch, in his essay Die deutsche Literatur in der Entscheidung (1948), National Socialism had led literature into a series of “Sackgassen” and in the process exhausted the creative talent of a generation: “Aus diesen Gründen, wie aus dem Zwang einer völlig neuartigen Situation heraus, steht die junge Generation vor einer tabula rasa, vor der Notwendigkeit, in einem originalen Schöpfungsakt eine Erneuerung des deutschen geistigen Lebens zu vollbringen” (1979: 128). Such attempts to present the late 1940s as the moment of a new beginning in German literature, understandable though they are in the political context, run counter to some hard facts that prove remarkable continuity before and after 1945. In the first place, it was not the books of writers of the “junge Generation,” of the group around Der Ruf, that were actually finding public resonance in the late 1940s, but those of authors belonging to an older tradition, authors who had published throughout the Third Reich as inner emigrants. Stefan Andres, Werner Bergengruen, Hans Carossa, and Ernst Wiechert wrote, published, and sold more books than the authors of the “junge Generation” in the period. Second, a number of the leading figures who championed the idea of a new start — including Andersch, Richter, and Kolbenhoff — had themselves already published literary works in the Nazi period, even if they were keen to gloss over this fact following the collapse of the 8 regime. In form and language, too, the literary legacy of the past was impossible to shake off for most, as the critic Ralf Schnell argues: “Unterschiedslos wird beispielsweise die Form des Sonetts für Liebes- und Naturpoesie, für die Deutschland-Lyrik dieser Zeit oder für grelle Antikriegsgedichte verwendet, in einem Maße, daß Zeitgenossen sogar von einer ‘Sonettenraserei’ gesprochen haben” (1993: 90). Continuity of a different sort can also be identified if one considers the political context in which all authors were publishing through the period of occupation. Certainly, the rulers and the rules had changed in Germany, but the fundamental idea that literature had a political function that should be shaped and used by those in power was paradoxically shared by the Nazi state and the Allies who brought about its downfall. Newspaper, magazine, and book production by Germans in the zones of occupation were all subject to control by the Allies until 1948, through the granting of licenses. To take the example of the American Zone, it was the US State Department which had ultimate authority over cultural matters in Germany, a power exercised on the ground by the US Office

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of Military Government for Germany (OMGUS), in particular by its Information Control Division (ICD). The ICD was, in effect, the new cultural censor for the American Zone. As far as literature was concerned, its program of re-education consisted in the removal from circulation of material now deemed unsuitable and its replacement with German translations of American books considered appropriate for fostering capitalist/democratic ideas. The British Zone followed a similar path 9 through the Political Intelligence Division’s Selected Book Scheme. The Soviets, meanwhile, encouraged the reading of socialist literature, including the work of pro-socialist German exile writers, through the Kulturbund zur demokratischen Erneuerung Deutschlands, founded as early as July 1945. While direct comparisons are misleading, the bureaucratic mechanisms and the process of drawing up lists of what should, and should not, be read certainly have echoes of the previous regime. Moreover, German literature was swept along by politics in another direction as the comradeship of the fight against Hitler quickly gave way to the growing hostility of Cold War thinking among the Allies in the late 1940s. In this context, too, the ideas of a self-determined new beginning for German culture and politics seem, at best, idealistic. Thus, for example, the calls of those surrounding Der Ruf for a rejection of the notion of collective guilt and the development of a “Sozialismus des dritten Weges,” in which writers and intellectuals would play a full part in the regeneration of a single, democratic German state, rapidly fell afoul of US hostility towards any ideas which could be construed as critical of the American 10 way. As a result, in April 1947 the American military authorities banned Der Ruf and allowed it to reappear only when Andersch and Richter had been replaced as its editors by Erich Kuby (under whom Der Ruf survived until March 1949). Again, the parallels should not be overstated, but the principle that a journal could be banned by the government because of its politics clearly carries some echoes of the situation under Goebbels, although, of course, the practical consequences of such a ban were now less severe for those on whom it fell. Furthermore, the reaction of Richter to his enforced removal from Der Ruf had far-reaching consequences for literary culture’s oppositional stance in the future West German state. In the same year, in inviting a selected group of writers to his home to read from and discuss their works, Richter created the Gruppe 47, the most influential body in West German literature through to the 1960s. Meetings of the Gruppe 47 held throughout the 1950s followed a typical format: authors came at Richter’s invitation, read from their work, then took the criticism of their peers on the chin, without the right to reply. For Richter, explicitly, this was not to be a forum for political discussion. And

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yet it quickly became clear that the kind of writing that the Gruppe 47 encouraged was not that of apparently apolitical inner emigrants. The work of Andersch, Böll, Grass, and Koeppen in the 1950s stood in an uncomfortably tense relationship to the confident, optimistic ethos of West 11 German society under Konrad Adenauer.

Wolfgang Koeppen: A Case in Point The foregoing overview of the period 1933–1950 highlights the close, frequently antagonistic relationship between literature and politics in Germany across the political upheaval of the collapse of National Socialism. It illustrates, too, a number of fundamental continuities — in personnel, in styles of writing, in the attempt to control literature from above — that give the lie to any notion of a “tabula rasa” in 1945. In order to throw these necessarily general observations into clearer focus, I should like now to carry out one case study of a German author who, though not a political animal himself, was caught up in the conflicts and continuities in literary politics of the time. This is not to argue that Wolfgang Koeppen is merely a type or that his career follows a pattern that can be applied to other German writers with impunity. Rather, it is some of the unique features of his progress through the early part of his career that will offer practical examples of how writing and politics are inextricably linked in Germany in the period under discussion. Born in Greifswald on 23 June 1906, Koeppen belongs to the generation of Germans who were young adults by the time Hitler came to power. He had survived the economic problems of the Weimar Republic with a variety of temporary jobs, including a period as a cook on board a ship. His career as a writer began in the late 1920s and included contributions to the communist journal Die Rote Fahne, which testify to an early interest in socialist politics that was inevitably to be nipped in the bud. In the period January 1931 to December 1933 he was employed as a reporter for the Jewish-owned Berliner Börsen-Courier. At this very early stage in his writing career, the interference of the political climate immediately becomes clear. His early contributions to the Börsen-Courier demonstrate considerable sympathy for victims of the economic crisis of the final Weimar years and a very critical view of attempts by right-wing extremists to agitate and profit from it; after January 1933, as the newspaper — and perhaps Koeppen himself — came under the pressures of Gleichschaltung, the attitude expressed in his articles changes. To cite just two examples: a visit to Paris in June 1933 brings a distorted view of those who had fled Germany over recent months: “Jedenfalls sind die

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Gerüchte über eine deutsche Emigration in Paris genau so übertrieben wie die Gerüchte über Deutschland unter diesen Emigranten. . . . Die Deutschen, die sich zur Zeit dort aufhalten, haben fast alle die Absicht, in ihre Heimat zurückzukehren. Ihre Gespräche handeln nicht vom Aufbau ihrer Existenz in Frankreich, sondern von der aus irgendwelchen Gründen besonderen Situation für sie in Deutschland und der Möglichkeit der Rückkehr, der in den meisten Fällen nichts als eine Verwirrung entgegensteht” (1992a: V, 75–76); and on the occasion of Stefan George’s sixty-fifth birthday, Koeppen’s eulogy is expressed in the categories of the new political correctness, as he praises George’s “Herkunft aus dem Volke, die glückliche germanisch-romanische Blutmischung und das Heranwachsen in rheinischer Landschaft und Kultur” (VI, 44). While it is clear that Koeppen had not become a Nazi convert overnight, the influence of the change in government on his journalism is obvious. The enforced closure of the Berliner-Börsen Courier at the end of 1933 brought two responses from Koeppen: first, he turned to creative writing as a way of earning his living, publishing his first novel Eine unglückliche Liebe in 1934; second, he left Germany for a period of exile in Holland, apparently out of horror at Hitler’s government: “1934, als ich das Buch Eine unglückliche Liebe geschrieben hatte, ging ich freiwillig in die Emigration, weil mir dieser Nationalsozialismus entsetzlich und unsympathisch war. Ich hatte eigentlich keinen Fluchtgrund. Mein Leben war nicht bedroht. Ich war nicht Jude und ich galt nicht als Kommunist. . . . Ich bin aus purem Abscheu ins Ausland gefahren” (Sauter 1986: 544). Koeppen continued to publish in Germany, however, most notably in the form of his second novel Die Mauer schwankt (1935). In 1938 he returned to Germany and spent the remaining years of Hitler’s dictatorship in Berlin and on the Starnberger See, working in the Nazi film industry, publishing some wholly apolitical stories, and finally (he claims) hiding from arrest in the cellar of a hotel. These colorful episodes (which Koeppen recounted willingly in interview in later life, not always without contradicting himself) shed light on two sorts of literary response to the politics of National Socialism: that of the exile and that of the inner emigrant. In the letter “Warum ich nicht nach Deutschland zurückgehe” mentioned in an earlier context, Thomas Mann outlined some of the practical unpleasantness of life as an exile: living in hotels, feeling isolated from one’s home, “das Herzasthma des Exils, die Entwurzelung, die nervösen Schrecken der Heimatlosigkeit” (1965: 647). If these difficulties were large for someone with the huge reputation — and financial stability — of Thomas Mann, how much greater must they have been for Wolfgang Koeppen, whose literary career was only just beginning

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and who had survived up to that point only through a series of temporary jobs. In interview he frequently expressed the opinion that his political decision affected his literary work; to Manfred Durzak in 1984, for example: “Holland war eine Falle, Holland war ein Irrtum. Sie sagten, ich sei nicht völlig abgeschlossen gewesen vom literarischen Leben in Deutschland. Das möchte ich anders sagen: Ich war abgeschnitten von dem literarischen Leben in Deutschland” (Durzak 1984: 88). While Koeppen’s practical experience of the difficulties of life as an exile can be regarded as quite typical, his literary response to the feelings of isolation he describes sets him in a different category from prominent exile writers such as Thomas and Klaus Mann or Anna Seghers. While they used literature to attack the Nazi regime from abroad, in the hope of bringing it to an end, little of the “Abscheu” to which Koeppen ascribes his emigration appears in his published work of the period. In fact, Koeppen’s writing before, during, and after his period in Holland is consistent in its avoidance of overtly political comment; his is a stance typical of the inner emigrant, even while he is an “outer” emigrant. Thus, for example, his first two novels, both of which date from this period, share an overwhelming concern with the emotional lives of their protagonists, to the extent that it is often unclear exactly what is going on in the physical world. Friedrich, the central character of Eine unglückliche Liebe, is so obsessively in love with the actress Sibylle that his behavior becomes entirely irrational; and Koeppen’s concentration on this emotional obsession is such that we can only guess where the novel is set and we never even learn the characters’ surnames. Die Mauer schwankt has some connections with the contemporary world, but they are, at best, hazy. The novel’s protagonist, Johannes von Süde, does come into contact with a resistance group in a dictatorship in an unnamed Balkan state; yet it is not entirely clear whether his new acquaintances are freedom-fighters or terrorists, and in any case Johannes becomes involved with them because he is attracted to one of the female leaders, not out of any political conviction. By the end of the story, to the outside world he has returned to loyal service to the German state as a public architect in an East Prussian town. Koeppen’s focus, as in the earlier novel, is on the disturbed psychological development of an individual, and external events exist only as a function of this analysis. Koeppen’s concentration in these two novels on his characters’ emotional lives at the expense of a clear engagement with the contemporary world can be regarded as typical of one sort of inner-emigrant writing. The fate of the two novels in the Third Reich also highlights some of the general issues raised earlier in this chapter. By 1936, Eine unglückliche Liebe

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had been placed on the list of “unerwünschte Bücher” by the Reichsschrifttumskammer. It seems likely, however, that this ban arose not because of the regime’s disapproval of Koeppen’s writing, but because his then publisher, the Cassirer Verlag, was Jewish-owned. The state’s intervention in all aspects of the book industry, not just in the lives of writers, is clear here. The fact that writing that avoided clear political comment could be published inside the Third Reich is confirmed by the intriguing history of the second novel’s publication. It, too, appeared first with Cassirer, but then Hans Georg Brenner, at that time a Lektor for the Universitas Verlag, persuaded Koeppen to allow a new edition to appear in 1939 under the title Die Pflicht. The political evasiveness of Die Mauer schwankt meant not only that it could pass through the Nazi censorship mechanisms, but also that it received some positive reviews: “Daraufhin wurde das Buch — was vorher nicht der Fall gewesen war — von einigen Provinzzeitungen, von etwas naziangehauchten Zeitungen rezensiert — was mir natürlich auch nicht gefiel” (Oehlenschläger 1987: 381). The publication history of Koeppen’s first two novels therefore illustrates something of the values underlying the mechanisms of the Nazi literary system; the novels themselves illustrate at least one possible literary response to the political restrictions of the time. Following his return to Germany in 1938, Koeppen found employment in the Nazi film industry and continued to publish a small number of stories and articles that avoided engagement with contemporary politics. Necessarily, then, he applied for membership in the Reichsschrifttumskammer and his application forms make fascinating reading. They illustrate, on the one hand, the extent of the racial discrimination practiced by the Kammer, for they include forms demanding information not only about Koeppen’s parents but also about his grandparents on both sides of the family; and on the other, they illustrate the advantages that membership in the Kammer could bring. In April 1940, for example, the Universitas Verlag made a request to the Charlottenburg office of the Reichsschrifttumskammer for Koeppen’s military service to be postponed, on the grounds that he was writing a novel for them; via a memorandum to Goebbels’s Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, the Reichsschrifttumskammer was able to intervene successfully on Koeppen’s behalf. The political system and the career of a writer are shown by these (unpublished) documents to be very closely intertwined in the Nazi state. Koeppen’s desire to escape the call-up to military service eventually led to a period in hiding in a hotel in Feldafing on the banks of the Starnberger See at the end of the Second World War. While his literary career was necessarily suspended in this period, the collapse of the Third

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Reich brought a return to writing. Koeppen, thanks to the three novels he published in the early 1950s — Tauben im Gras (1951), Das Treibhaus (1953), and Der Tod in Rom (1954) — came to be regarded as one of the most prominent postwar writers in West Germany, a fact that frequently covers over the details of his earlier career. In this sense, he belongs to the “junge Generation” of writers who were (mistakenly) perceived as having started their careers after 1945. Although never quite part of the prominent literary organizations around Andersch and Richter, Koeppen exemplifies two features of postwar writing associated with those organizations. First, his published work of the period demonstrates a readiness to engage with the recent past. The revelation of the 1990s that his first published novel of the postwar period had come in 1948 under the pseudonym Jakob Littner dramatically illustrated this point: Aufzeichnungen aus einem Erdloch (1992b) is Koeppen’s adaptation of the real Littner’s account of his experiences as a Jew in the Third Reich, fleeing Munich for his life and surviving the ghettos of Eastern Europe. The shadow of the Nazi past is prominent, too, in the trilogy of novels of the early 1950s, most notably in the unreconstructed views of the Judejahn family in Der Tod in Rom. Second, critical distance towards the new society, which arises in part as a result of this awareness of the past, is the most prominent feature of Koeppen’s writing of the period. “Fische, die nach Luft schnappen,” a story published in Der Ruf in 1948, points unmistakably to the Ideologieverdacht of the three novels of the early 1950s. The title itself suggests something of the struggle for survival that marked the period and the story is set very clearly among the ruins of Germany against the background of the black market economy. At the same time, the story has a fairy-tale quality: a fish that Elisabeth, the main character, has bought after standing in a long queue, suddenly comes to life and announces that it is a refugee from the atomic bomb testing in Bikini Atoll. Koeppen reworked the story under the title “Trümmer oder wohin wandern wir aus” for publication in his collection of stories entitled Romanisches Café (1972), and the implication of the new title holds for the first version too: there is nowhere to go on earth to escape the potential for destruction of the atomic bomb. It is the sense of the meaninglessness of human society expressed in “Fische, die nach Luft schnappen” that characters throughout Koeppen’s three later and more famous novels experience: from Philipp, the writer in Tauben im Gras who recognizes that political nationalism is as arbitrary as supporting a particular football team, through Keetenheuve, the Bundestag MP who takes his own life at the end of Das Treibhaus when he realizes how little things have changed in the new FRG, to Siegfried,

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the young musician of Der Tod in Rom, who can only hope to flee the legacy of his family’s Nazi crimes in the jungles of Africa. These uncomfortable portrayals of contemporary society left Koeppen at odds with the confident ethos of reconstruction that marked the Adenauer era. Criticisms of the novels at their time of publication — that they were overly pessimistic, morally bankrupt, even treasonable — echo strongly the attacks of the establishment on the Gruppe 47. Although Koeppen was unable, subsequently, to reproduce the achievements of the postwar trilogy, he led the way in the early 1950s in establishing the kind of critical stance towards West German society that marked much of the most interesting literature it produced. Leaving aside the fact that Koeppen had begun his career well before 1945, it is possible to argue that these aspects of his work — his concern with the immediate past and his skepticism about the politics of the present — constitute a new kind of literature that might lend credence to the idea of a “Kahlschlag” in German literature. At the same time, however, there are features in his writing, even in the 1950s, that suggest very powerful lines of literary continuity. The title of Der Tod in Rom, for example, is not the only aspect of his writing after 1945 that owes a debt to the work of the Mann family before 1945; and, as Koeppen has acknowledged in interviews, European and American literary modernism had a powerful influence on his work throughout his career, albeit in an attenuated form during the Third Reich. The postwar novels overflow with allusions to literary precedents. In particular, Das Treibhaus is full of intertextual references, from the Nibelungenlied, through Macbeth, Goethe’s Faust and Kleist’s Michael Kohlhaas, to nineteenth-century French romantic poetry, Heidegger and Ernst Jünger, and the works of e. e. cummings. Most strikingly, Koeppen’s criticisms of contemporary society in all of his work from the period 1945–1954 are expressed with remarkable consistency by the use of strands of imagery with a very long tradition. It is, above all, to images from the natural world (Tauben im Gras, “Fische, die nach Luft schnappen,” even Treibhaus) and from classical mythology (Odysseus Cotton is a black American soldier in Tauben im Gras; Keetenheuve comes across as a modern-day Theseus lost in the labyrinth of Bonn) that Koeppen turns to express his criticisms. Nor do examples of continuity in Koeppen’s work across the political collapse of 1945 end in the 1950s. Proof of the notion that the literarypolitical categories of the Nazi period, outlined at the beginning of this chapter, continued to influence attitudes well into the Federal Republic is also confirmed by Koeppen’s later career. To return to the checkered history surrounding the publication of his second novel, Die Mauer

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schwankt, Koeppen claimed that after 1945 he was left with neither a copy of the published text nor an original manuscript; it had, it seems, disappeared from the market. By 1983, however, he had discovered a copy in a flea market in Amsterdam and was willing to allow its republication with Suhrkamp, with a new foreword explaining the circumstances under which the novel was written and his intention in writing it. Specifically, Koeppen makes a claim in this remarkable foreword for his book to be included amongst those that attempted to subvert the Nazi regime in encoded form: “Ich leistete Widerstand, wenn auch versteckt” (1992a: I, 164). Leaving to one side the debate as to whether the text itself sustains this view, the simple fact that, almost forty years after the end of the Nazi regime, Koeppen made his own contribution to the inner-emigration debate demonstrates clearly how connections between politics and literature in the Third Reich were carried forward into the Federal Republic. I do not mean to suggest that Wolfgang Koeppen’s experiences are typical of all German writers in the period from 1933 onward. Koeppen’s career is certainly unique, at times bizarrely so. It does, however, illustrate in its particulars some of the fundamental ways in which literature and politics are intertwined in Germany over the middle decades of the twentieth century. From the Nazi period, Koeppen had personal experience of the pressure of Gleichschaltung at the Berliner-Börsen Courier; of having a book banned by the Reichsschrifttumskammer for racial reasons; of the problems associated with life in exile; of joining the Reichsschrifttumskammer and publishing as an inner emigrant (of whatever sort). Koeppen also contributes to the debate about the status of writing of inner emigrants. That his contribution comes forty years after the fact illustrates the way in which such categories remained with authors of his generation. After 1945, we also note the perception, triggered by the notoriety surrounding the trilogy of novels, that he is a young writer only just beginning a career; and we see in his writing an awareness of the legacy of the political past and an utter skepticism of ideology in the new situation that makes him a leading figure in the “junge Generation” by 1954. That status notwithstanding, it is clear that Koeppen’s writing, like that of others around him, did not simply start from scratch in the late 1940s; on the contrary, literary technique and intertextual references testify to a considerable debt in his work to what had come before. Equally clear is the fact that German politics shaped and interfered with Wolfgang Koeppen’s literary career either side of 1945, as it did — with different details but in a similar general way — for all writers of his generation.

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Notes 1

The Reichsstelle zur Förderung des deutschen Schrifttums (Hauptamt Schrifttumspflege) arose from the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur, established by Alfred Rosenberg in 1929 as an organization to fight the “undeutschen Geist” of the Weimar Republic. From 1934 Rosenberg enjoyed, among others, the grandiose title of “Beauftragter des Führers für die Überwachung der gesamten geistigen und weltanschaulichen Schulung und Erziehung der NSDAP.” Rosenberg’s rivalry with Goebbels in this office over the control of German culture led to repeated instances of conflict between the so-called Amt Rosenberg and the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda. See the correspondence reproduced in Wulf (1983: 229–68). 2

The Parteiamtliche Prüfungskommission was established by Rudolf Heß in April 1934 to monitor all publications by the NSDAP itself, as well as school books, and academic publications. 3

The writer Max Tau was the last Jew to be excluded from the Reichsschrifttumskammer in 1935. 4

Book-burnings were organized in towns throughout Germany to coincide with the Berlin event on 10 May, but similar events were scattered throughout the period 26 March (Kaiserslautern) to 21 June (Darmstadt, Weimar) 1933. Hamburg and Heidelberg saw two separate ceremonies; Freiburg’s was canceled due to rain. 5

See, for example, the essay by Alfred Andersch, “Die deutsche Literatur in der Entscheidung,” in which he maintains that “jede Dichtung, die unter der Herrschaft des Nationalsozialismus ans Licht kam, Gegnerschaft gegen ihn bedeutete, sofern sie nur Dichtung war” (1979: 114). 6

Thieß attempted to argue in retrospect that the novel in question, Das Reich der Dämonen, expressed criticism of the Nazi regime. See also my comments on Wolfgang Koeppen’s Die Mauer schwankt below. 7

Alfred Andersch and Hans Werner Richter had edited a version of Der Ruf, as prisoners-of-war in Fort Kearney in the United States, as part of the American reeducation programme. The Munich version, conceived at first as a successor to the POW edition, was licensed in 1946.

8

That Richter, in particular, had published during the Third Reich, despite his protestations to the contrary, remains a little acknowledged fact in standard literary histories of the period. For a discussion of his stories “Ein Spiel um Morgenwind” and “Die Sternschnuppe” see Cook (1989). 9

For an analysis of the Selected Book Scheme and of another, remarkable set of continuities connected with the type of English literature chosen to set a good example to the Germans of the British Zone, see Williams (1997). 10 The most notable contribution to his line of cultural-political argument came from Alfred Andersch’s own contribution to Der Ruf, “Das junge Europa formt sein Gesicht” (1946). 11

Famously — and revealingly in the present context — the CDU politician Josef Hermann Dufhues dubbed the Gruppe 47 the “geheime Reichsschrifttumskammer” of the Federal Republic in 1963.

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Works Cited Andersch, Alfred. “Die deutsche Literatur in der Entscheidung.” In Das Alfred Andersch Lesebuch, ed. Gerd Haffmanns. Zurich: Diogenes, 1979, 111–34. Cook, Graeme. “‘Hinterwälderische Verlorenheit’ . . . Hans Werner Richter’s literary work in the Third Reich.” German Life and Letters 42 (1989): 312–27. Durzak, Manfred. “Überleben im Dritten Reich: Gespräch mit Wolfgang Koeppen.” Die neue Rundschau 95/4 (1984): 88–98. Koeppen, Wolfgang. Gesammelte Werke. 6 vols. Berlin: Rowohlt, 1992a. ———. Jakob Littners Aufzeichnungen aus einem Erdloch. Frankfurt am Main: Jüdischer Verlag [= Suhrkamp], 1992b. Mann, Thomas. “Warum ich nicht nach Deutschland zurückgehe.” In Stockholmer Gesamtausgabe, Reden und Aufsätze II. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1965, 645–54. Oehlenschläger, Eckart. Wolfgang Koeppen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987. Ritchie, J. M. “The Nazi Book-Burning.” Modern Language Review 83 (1988): 627–43. Sauter, Josef-Hermann. “Gespräch mit Wolfgang Koeppen,” Sinn und Form 3 (1986): 543–55. Schäfer, Hans-Dieter. Das gespaltene Bewußtsein: Deutsche Kultur und Lebenswirklichkeit 1933–45. Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein, 1981. Schnell, Ralf. Geschichte der deutschsprachigen Literatur seit 1945. Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 1993. Thieß, Frank. “Die innere Emigration.” Hannoverscher Kurier (14 September 1945). ———. Das Reich der Dämonen. Berlin: P. Zsolnay, 1941. Weyrauch, Wolfgang, ed. Tausend Gramm. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1989. Williams, Rhys W. “‘The selections of the committee are not in accord with the requirements of Germany’: Contemporary English Literature and the Selected Book Scheme in the British Zone of Germany (1945–50).” In The Cultural Legacy of the British Occupation in Germany: The London Symposium, ed. Alan Bance. Stuttgart: Hans-Dieter Heinz, 1997, 110–38. Wulf, Joseph. Literatur und Dichtung im Dritten Reich: Eine Dokumentation. Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein, 1983.

“Das habe ich getan, sagt mein Gedächtnis. Das kann ich nicht getan haben, sagt mein Stolz! . . .” History and Morality in Hochhuth’s Effis Nacht Hans-Joachim Hahn

Literature and the Nazi Past

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belongs to the tradition of plays and novels concerned with Germany’s “unbewältigter Vergangenheit,” with its attempt to come to terms with the Nazi past, in the sense of understanding and accepting it. Coming to terms with this past has been a tortuously slow and painful process. It has often been stated that there was little evidence of a process of guilt recognition and a desire for atonement in the immediate aftermath of the war. The first generation of postwar writers, those associated with Gruppe 47, seem to have done little to promote the cause of Holocaust recognition and of expiating German guilt. Many historians would cite the Currency Reform of 1948 and the ensuing economic miracle, together with the onset of the Cold War, for this state of affairs. Such conclusions frequently overlook the traumatic effect that the revelations of Nazi crimes, committed in the name of Germany, would have had on its warweary, demoralized society. With the collapse of the National Socialist regime and the cessation of hostilities, the priority of the educated middle classes (Bildungsbürger) was to restore Germany’s cultural traditions 1 and to reintegrate her into the community of civilized nations. The “Stunde Null” represents this desire for normality, for an end to the past, 2 for a tabula rasa. Influenced by French existentialism, but lacking its political engagement, the postwar writers attempted a search for Wandlung, for some inner renewal. Hans Werner Richter’s famous 1947 essay, “Literatur im Interregnum,” however, was still imprisoned in a vocabulary that had its origins in the German Youth Movement; it defined

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writers as being involved in some desperate search for meaning, advocating some kind of magic realism (Richter 1947). Even in 1952, when Paul Celan read his Todesfuge to the meeting of the Gruppe 47, it was criticized as an example of poésie engagée (Lettau 1967: 78). A decisive first attempt at facing Germany’s National Socialist past came with the publication of Günter Grass’s Die Blechtrommel in 1959. Its reception signified a new chapter in German cultural history. Although awarded the Gruppe 47 prize, its nomination for the Bremen Literaturpreis caused a political scandal: the city senate accused the book of obscenity and blasphemy, the two most heinous crimes in the Christian Democrat code. Most critics failed to appreciate its ironic, moralist stance; even Reich-Ranicki felt that the novel did not deal with problems, but sensationalized sexual impropriety (Reich-Ranicki 1963). In the Federal Republic, writing about Nazi crimes seemed to lead inexorably to political scandal. Such recrimination reached a climax in the spring of 1963, when Hochhuth’s Der Stellvertreter appeared on the German stage. The play accused Pope Pius XII of harboring fascist tendencies and of condoning the Holocaust. Peter Weiss’s sensational first production of Marat/Sade followed a year later. While each of these works attempted to confront German inhumanity and contributed its share towards the necessary Trauerarbeit, they all employed some form of alienating viewpoint. Grass depicted reality from the mythical, estranging perspective of a three-year-old outsider. Both Hochhuth and Weiss used settings outside Germany, thereby suggesting an international dimension to the problem. Hochhuth also expressed his message in the neoclassical diction of Schiller, while a stage direction even suggests that human imagination must fail in any endeavor to depict Auschwitz, the destruction of Dresden, Hiroshima, or exploratory flights into the universe (Hochhuth 1963). Even Christa Wolf’s 1976 novel Kindheitsmuster, published in the GDR, where the presentation of Nazi crimes was part of the political agenda, avoided an open confrontation with the past, preferring instead a much gentler, subjective approach in the form of an examination of her personal involvement as a young girl. All these authors, ranging from Peter Weiss (born in 1916) to Rolf Hochhuth (born in 1931), are of a similar generation. They could all have identified with Grass’s statement on introducing himself to an Israeli audience: “too young to have been a Nazi, but old enough to have been molded by a system that, from 1933 to 1945, at first surprised then horrified the world.” Grass described himself as a man who was “neither a proven antifascist nor an ex-National Socialist, but rather the accidental product of a crop of young men who were either born too early or infected too late” (Grass 1968: 89f).

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Recently two further works by German writers have emerged, both re-examining the problem of a collective guilt, though in a rather different manner. Bernhard Schlink’s Der Vorleser, which caused a literary sensation, was described by one critic as “a tender horrifying novel that shows blazingly well how the Holocaust should be dealt with in fiction. A thriller, a love story and a deeply moving examination of a German conscience” (Schlink 1997: cover page). Hochhuth’s play Effis Nacht, by comparison, has received little public attention. It has not been translated and has scarcely been a topic of literary criticism. Maybe today’s postmodern society has become insensitive to more complex representations of fundamental ethical issues, preferring the “crossing of the border” between popular taste and philosophical argument (Fiedler 1975). Alfred Starkmann seems to suggest this in his review of the play; he professes a certain resignation at the mention of German guilt and finds the discussion of love, death, and war boring (1996). Of the works mentioned above, I will briefly discuss only Die Blechtrommel, Kindheitsmuster, and Der Vorleser before turning to Hochhuth’s play. A common denominator of all three novels, which links them with Effis Nacht, is the treatment of Gedächtnis. The German term signifies its collective function more clearly than the English “memory” and invites discussion in a wider psychological context. The faculty of anamnesis, the recalling of events, ideas or people, a process equally at home in literature as in psychology, is related to its counterpart, amnesia. Clearly, memory can be suppressed and, as the Nietzsche quotation in the title of this essay suggests, our pride, our ego is actively involved in this process of suppression. Memory and pride are employed here in an antagonistic nature. The quotation continues: “Endlich gibt mein Gedächtnis nach . . .” (Hochhuth 3 1997: 36), suggesting that pride will ultimately prevail. Particular individual memories — Erinnerung, again much more potent than its English equivalent — can be employed to recreate specific events or perceptions, while Wiederholung gives this process a more metaphorical dimension, illustrating its role as moral guardian. Human memory enables us to preserve perceptions and transform our memory into a “storage place,” both for events we have personally experienced and others we have inherited via a cultural memory. Unlike animals, humans have the capacity not only to reflect on the past, but also to reject memories. The rejection of a past and the rebuilding of a future collective memory is the theme that binds these works together and can serve to turn them into an integral part of the German process of coming to terms with the past. Grass’s Oskar in Die Blechtrommel (1959), in the guise of a three-year-old child, takes on the role of omniscient narrator, recording events on his drum. After 1945 he

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develops a hunched back in which to “store” his impressions, a symbol both of his memory and his resentment. The drum also serves to awaken the reader’s conscience, another important moral aspect of the human memory, best illustrated in the chapter “Zwiebelkeller.” Memories are recorded, preserved, called up in order to avoid the repetition of earlier disasters. The evocative moral function of Oskar’s preservation of history is the main feature of Grass’s novel, even if the issue is somewhat obfuscated by Oskar’s elevation to the role of a Jesus figure. This device somewhat discredits him as a reliable chronicler, and therefore forces our active participation in unraveling the historical reality. As Wolf’s narrator in Kindheitsmuster (1975), Nelly is presented in a more realistic and therefore also more authentic guise. Unlike Oskar, she has a personal guilt to confront; while she was a member of the Nazi youth group BDM, she betrayed her closest school friend out of political opportunism. Memory becomes a crucial problem for her. It is also conceived in terms of its opposite, oblivion, and associated with speechlessness, the failure of a cognitive recall of the past. At times her memory threatens to become an inhibiting force; too much effort is devoted to understanding the past, to the minute examination of her personal memory. Her journey to her place of birth represents a journey to the within, a kind of psychological “recalling,” the attempt to rediscover, recollect the past in order to reflect upon it, to sensitize it. Schlink’s “reader” Michael Berg in Der Vorleser (1995) is too young to be implicated in Germany’s criminal past. His sexual encounters with the older Hanna, a former camp guard at Cracow, are part of a characterbuilding process. His guilt consists in not acknowledging the relationship publicly, in hiding his personal shame. Michael’s exploration of the past moves from the academic to the personal; through Hanna he himself feels implicated in the Nazi crimes. The key image is the finger he points at her and that turns back to him (Schlink 1995: 162). He attempts to desensitize himself but discovers that he cannot escape from his personal past which — at the same time — is a past he shares with all of Germany. Michael betrays Hanna three times, the last time by blotting her out from his existence and placing her into a niche, some kind of depository for the unwanted. Ultimately, however, he has to act as the executor of Hanna’s will, so that her crime and attempted atonement live on in him. Schlink’s novel has profound, even subtle qualities, but it personalizes the conflict too much, it plays too much on an emotional level, and the “memory game” becomes too closely interwoven with the love story.

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Hochhuth’s Effis Nacht Effis Nacht employs a different approach. Though its plot is largely fictional, it still follows the tradition of documentary theater, seeking to stimulate an intellectual response which, in turn, will lead to some kind of catharsis. This will finally evoke the personal resolution necessary to change the moral conventions of our existing society. Hochhuth’s monologue fits into the general pattern of the works discussed so far, though here the protagonist lives through the war period as an adult and recollects her childhood in pre-Nazi Germany. Hochhuth, writing in the late 1990s, is less interested in focusing his audience’s mind on coming to terms with Nazi guilt than with examining the reasons for the atrocities committed by German soldiers. The crimes are associated with a male-dominated world obsessed with pride and a military code of honor but lacking in humanity, and the mortally wounded soldier in Effis Nacht is the product of its false pride. Now aged ninety, Elisabeth Freifrau von Ardenne, here referred to as Else, was the main source for Theodor Fontane’s novel Effi Briest. Else’s memories focus on her adolescent marriage to General von Ardenne and her extra-marital affair with the lawyer and intellectual Hartwich. This process of recollection occurs during one early summer’s night in 1943, as she relates her own drama to the waning fortunes of the Third Reich, while British bombers endanger her life and that of the young soldier whom she is nursing. The connection between Else’s personal guilt and that of Nazi Germany seems at first tenuous, but it gains in significance once the audience realizes that Hochhuth casts his net wider than Grass, Wolf, and Schlink in order to draw out the underlying social and cultural reasons for the descent into bestiality. As mentioned earlier, the antagonism between memory and pride plays the significant part in this play and both attributes must initially be viewed as of equal value. Pride was originally seen as an aristocratic quality, some form of self-esteem, associated with position and power. Within our (secularized) Christian tradition, pride, or superbia, can only be accepted if it is coupled with its opposite quality, humility. Within the monologue, a false pride is attributed to Ardenne and is extended to his officer class and the German High Command, while humility is illustrated in Else’s service to the wounded soldier. Ardenne’s pride is based on convention and a desire for power which can itself be the manifestation of a personality deficiency, here related to the root of those evils that have plagued German and European society over many generations. By contrast, Else has chosen the unconventional route and gained the freedom to clear her

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conscience. In her desire for self-justification Else’s own pride leads to a temporary memory loss. She seeks to overcome this Freudian repression, in part through her lengthy and painstakingly reflective monologue, in part through tending to the needs of the dying soldier. In both instances Else is engaged in a process of Verarbeitung which can help her regain her memory. We shall return to this process later. While nursing the young soldier, blinded and comatose, for whom pride and memory can no longer play any part, Else’s own memory gropes its way back to the fateful duel in which her husband shot her lover Hartwich, who died three days later. The associations between the dying soldier and Else’s beloved Hartwich lead to a general reflection, not only on Nazi crimes or British bombing raids, but also on the moral codes of a male-dominated society in general. In Else’s mind such codes are associated with the officer caste, with the “kleine, an ihrem Volk verbrecherisch gewordene Kaste” (13) to which her former husband belonged and which Churchill mentions in his BBC broadcast, a class chiefly responsible for Hitler’s wars, but also indirectly for the carpet bombing of German cities. It is of course also the caste embodying the Prussian code of honor that Fontane glorified in his novel. Despite Else’s many acknowledgments of her guilt, she has expiated it through years of selfless service. Hochhuth has faithfully observed the biography of the old lady. From a dramatic point of view it seems essential that this woman, portrayed in Fontane’s novel as a naive member of the nobility, is shown to have become a truly remarkable character, a person who would be more than a match for any officer. Her biography is summarized in the first stage direction. It is typical of many others given by Hochhuth here and elsewhere, in that it is not intended solely for the stage, but contains many details that provide an insight into the character. It tells us that, at the age of fifty, Else was the first woman to climb a 3000-meters high mountain in the Alps. Ten years later she took up skiing and, as an eighty-year-old, she learned to ride a bike. She died at the age of ninety-nine, in the town of Lindau on Lake Constance (7). Further stage directions describe in great detail the demanding nature of Else’s nursing duties. Hochhuth even suggests that the producer should avail himself of a neurologist’s expert advice. Else has to undertake many difficult procedures which — the author suggests — will create macabre entertainment for the audience (9). The complex interrelationship between the spoken text and the services rendered to the patient is a central aspect of the dramatic monologue and it remains open to doubt whether it could ever be successfully produced on stage. The only production so far attempted was by August Everding, director of the Munich Akademie-

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theater, who died recently. This performance, though apparently well 4 attended, was a dramatic failure. Everding cut whole passages of the text, which, given its length, might have been unavoidable, but he also curtailed the essential caring process. The nursing aspect, which should have formed an integral part of the vital, nonverbal dialogue, is reduced to a mere sideshow. Everding seems to have ignored Hochhuth’s explicit reference that attention to the severely wounded soldier and his needs must always be given priority over everything else (9). Else has to feed the patient by infusion, by means of a tube inserted through his nose, she has to suck out the mucus which is causing congestion in his lungs, she has to turn him over, wash him, exercise his limbs, and change his dressings. Many of these procedures are highly technical and demand the utmost mental concentration, while others, which might take up to fifteen minutes, require all her physical strength and energy (54). Here is just one of twenty stage directions devoted to the care of the patient: Der Verwundete ist verstuhlt, sie muß ihn putzen. Sie zieht auf der linken Seite das Bettgitter hoch und entfernt unter seinem Kopf zwei Kissen, die sie neben ihm auf der linken Seite des Bettes nebeneinander plazieren wird, damit er nicht gegen das Gitter stößt. Anschließend greift sie mit beiden Händen um seinen Oberkörper und zieht diesen gegen die rechte Seite, was einer enormen Anstrengung bedarf, weil komatöse Patienten, wegen des praktisch völlig ausbleibenden Körpertonus beinahe doppelt so schwer zu sein scheinen — das haben sie mit Verstorbenen gemeinsam. An der Unterlage, ein gefaltetes Bettuch unter dem Hintern des Verletzten, versucht sie auch, seinen Unterkörper auf die rechte Seite zu ziehen; dann dreht sie ihn (unter größter Anstrengung) nach links. So geschehen, zieht sie seinen linken Arm nach vorne, etwa im 90°-Winkel auf Kopfhöhe, die schlaffe Rechte liegt (fällt) seitlich den Bauch herab. Sie entfernt das Dreiecktuch, Vorgängerin der Windel, putzt ihn sorgfältig, erst mit feuchten, dann mit trockenen Lappen, reibt seinen Hintern, dann aber auch sein Kreuz und unteren Rückenteil, soweit sie das Hemd hochschieben kann, erst mit Wachholdergeist, dann mit einer NiveaFettcreme ein, wendet sich kurz ab, faltet ein frisches Dreeicktuch, schiebt es unter und bringt den Patienten in die bisherige Lage zurück: Der Oberkörper aufrecht (beinahe sitzend); mit einem langen Kissen (sog. Keil) wird die gelähmte Seite von der Hüfte bis zum Schultergelenk leicht unterstützt, weil die kranke Seite sofort nach hinten fällt (rutscht). Der Oberarm wird in einem Winkel von 45° abgelagert, der Unterarm liegt auf einem Kissen (zusätzlichen), leicht erhöht. Das gelähmte Bein wird auf einem flachen Kissen so gelagert, daß das Kniegelenk leicht unterstützt wird und die Ferse frei liegt. Der gelähmte Fuß wird durch ein Lagerungskissen (meistens ein Spreukissen) so gestützt, daß keine Spitzfußkontraktur entstehen kann. (53–54)

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If we compare these detailed instructions, part of one single stage di5 rection, with a video of Everding’s production, the shortcomings of that production are obvious. The contrast between the old lady and the physical and technical demands on her is insufficiently developed; the pitiful state of the utterly helpless soldier is not fully exposed. Else’s caring duties, often carried out in silence and requiring the utmost concentration, are vital for an understanding of the play. It is astonishing that the producer did not have the courage to allow the actions here to speak for themselves, rather than supplement them with an often intrusive monologue that distorts the original text and renders it complementary rather than contrastive. Else’s care illustrates humble, selfless service to humanity, made even more poignant by the age difference between nurse and patient. Her service is cathartic in the broadest sense, vicarious in the love and tenderness which she would have liked to bestow on Hartwich; it also provides the starkest contrast to the cruel futility and devastation of war. A further contrast is created in the original version between Else’s language, highly reflective and conceptual, and the silence in which she devotes herself to the patient. She is seen to be fully in control of her mental faculties and appears to be an acute analyst of her own psychic needs, aware that her humanitarian task also helps her to overcome her mental anguish. It would be wrong to dismiss the stage directions as too realistic and detailed; Hochhuth seems to employ here a corporeal language. The young soldier can no longer speak or gesticulate; his role is entirely passive, presenting in the true sense of the word a Leideform, in German both the passive voice and a form of suffering. As such, he has become part of a collective memory, functioning as a conduit to an entire cultural memory that forms a link between Else’s fond recollections of Hartwich, the audience’s aversion to war, and — by contrast — the overwhelming culture of pride and honor, as exercised by a male-dominated society. In a way, the reflective, conceptual language spoken by Else is written onto the body of the dying soldier. A dramatic tension develops between Else’s recollected identity, or at least the kind of identity she believes to be hers, and that of the soldier’s mutilated body. It is through this body that her recollections gain in significance. Upon a superficial reading of the play, it might be tempting to ignore the role “played” by the young soldier or even to feel that he could be replaced by a dummy. However, the minimalist responses evinced from him are of great importance; only a living person could convey such a degree of helplessness and utter misery, which in turn heighten the significance of Else’s charity and the impact of her action on the audience. One is reminded of the traditional

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pietà figure, of the dead Christ in the arms of his mother. Marked by her experience of five wars, Else sees the human race, as represented by her patient, to be characterized by an horrendous urge for destruction, mutilating and exterminating its own kind. The liberating bio-power that could have been realized in the sexuality of her relationship with Hartwich and that she sees celebrated in the novels of Otto Flake was condemned, ignored, suppressed by Fontane’s adherence to nineteenthcentury conventions (cf. Foucault 1977: 173). At the same time, the “memory,” which cannot be confined to either body or mind, helps her find her true identity through her acceptance of an alternative, altruistic culture, providing a resolution to her own crises and personal guilt.

History and Intertextuality in Effis Nacht The early summer of 1943, in which this monologue is set, is a crucial date in historical terms. It witnessed Rommel’s defeat in North Africa, following the disastrous Sixth Army campaign at Stalingrad. Goebbels had declared total war and the extermination of Jews was reaching its climax with the “final solution.” In Hochhuth’s work, 1943 always features prominently. In Der Stellvertreter, he deals with the deportation of Rome’s Jews; in Die Soldaten, the death of General Sikorski occurs in the summer of the same year; even in Die Juristen and in Lysistrate und die Nato, 1943 has great significance. For Hochhuth, 1943 was also a year of personal tragedy, when his cousin’s Jewish wife, who was living with Hochhuth’s parents at the time, committed suicide rather than face deportation (1996b: 246). In all Hochhuth’s plays, the great weight afforded to history serves to interpret his special brand of realism. In this respect, one has to distance oneself from conventional definitions and value judgments in order to understand the specific significance of Hochhuth’s approach. His own concept of realism is above all employed polemically against Brecht, especially against Brecht’s Lehrstück (1996a: 12–17). In a wider sense, Hochhuth is also opposed to Theodor Adorno’s view that in an entirely organized industrial society the decline of the individual, itself a category of the bourgeois age, is inevitable (Hochhuth 1971: 317). In marked contrast, Hochhuth expresses the opinion that decisions in drama (as in life) require a personification of conflict (318). Hochhuth became the strongest advocate of his generation for individual responsibility. Referring to Schiller’s “Die Schaubühne als moralische Anstalt,” he quotes the sentence that only on the stage will the great and powerful learn the 6 truth (1996a: 143). The human factor of tragedy, therefore, centers on

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the belief that man is a responsible individual, and Hochhuth here challenges Adorno’s statement by suggesting that a play written in the nuclear age is inconceivable without the expression of the most personal feelings. Hochhuth refers to Kogon’s reaction when faced with the mountains of skeletons at Buchenwald: “Betrachter der Zeitgeschichte, denke, dieser Rest von Fleisch und Bein sei dein Vater, dein Kind, deine Frau, sei der Mensch, der dir lieb ist!” (1971: 318). Elsewhere Hochhuth defines realism as “Auseinandersetzung mit der Welt” rather than “Überwindung dieser Welt” (1996a: 149). In other words, he does not look for an either-or solution, but weighs up and compares the various aspects of a realistically depicted situation. This leads him back to his preoccupation with Fontane, who avoided ideological interpretations and the search for an ultimate meaning. Hochhuth’s address, “Realismus — immer erneut zu bekämpfen,” given in February 1996, after the completion of Effis Nacht, quotes Fontane in its title and celebrates him alongside Erich Kästner and Grass as realists par excellence (1996a: 140–52). Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Hochhuth’s monologue is his use of intertextuality, here employed as a means of achieving his brand of realism. There is no evidence that Hochhuth had read Bakhtin’s Rabelais and his World or was familiar with his theory of dialogic imagination, and it is unlikely that he knew of Kristeva’s study of Bakhtin. He nevertheless employs the same technique. Bakhtin developed his concept of intertextuality with reference to the celebration of Carnival during the late Middle Ages, when “a boundless world of humorous forms and manifestations opposed the serious tone of medieval ecclesiastical and feudal culture” (1968: 4). Various “sub-texts” from pre-Christian festivals intermingle with the dogmatic aspect of Carnival, thus deconstructing and changing its official meaning. Verbal communication is best suited for entering into an “argument” with other texts, forming a latent background for the explicit speech (Arnold and Detering 1996: 432). Here “text” can also assume the form of gesture or facial expression or — as in Effis Nacht — a dialogue between caring nurse and comatose body. The “meaning” of the new text is derived partly from the manner in which the old text is appropriated, partly from the way in which both texts form a dialogic relationship with each other. Bakhtin believes that every understanding of a text involves relating this text to another text, a context. Only at the point of contact between texts can we gain access to its true meaning — can we participate in a true dialogue with the text 7 (cf. Bakhtin 1971). In this manner obsolete meanings can be renewed and prepared for re-entry into our memory. Such intertextual dialogue

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will almost inevitably relinquish any existing logocentric system in favor of temporary totalities. Hochhuth’s own formula, that realism has to be continually fought for, comes to mind (1996a: 140). Both Hochhuth and the advocates of intertextuality would agree that no text can ever be complete: every text on every new reading gains a new significance. A new context is thus constructed, a text with multiple coding, providing a new awareness of different patterns of other cultures, as Bakhtin’s analysis of Carnival has indicated. This newly created cultural awareness 8 will enter a “mémoire collective,” and in time this collective memory itself will become a “cultural memory.” Although it is unlikely that Hochhuth was familiar with Derrida’s theory of deconstruction, some aspects of it can shed light on the relationship between intertextuality in Effis Nacht and the deconstruction of an existing cultural memory. In an attempt to constantly refine his perception of “reality” Hochhuth contrasts the established Fontane text with Else’s evolving realizations as they emerge during her monologue, an almost “classical” application of the contrasting interplay between Derrida’s formula of écriture and parole. The tension between Fontane’s perceived character of Effi, solidified in the text, and the “real” figure of Else, realistically shaped after the historic model, turns into a Derridaian game in which the still dominant culture, particularly evident during the “Fontane year,” becomes relativized. This “game” gets further deconstructed when we realize that Hochhuth has also solidified Else in print, but this aspect has yet to be explored. Hochhuth’s use of intertextuality thereby renders the existing cultural memory defunct, depriving it of its dominant social function. These observations return us to my opening remarks, indicating that the dialogical relationship between individual “memory” and “pride” may be resolved within a collective memory, a new cultural awareness. The deconstructed collective cultural memory reveals structural defects and, deprived of its social and philosophical dominance, opens up new possibilities for coping with a past conditioned by an antiquated memory and that has now regained a meaningful identity (Lachmann 1996: 799). In Hochhuth’s play, different relationships of intertextuality can be identified. Loosely following Lachmann’s definition, we can distinguish three functions of intertextuality related to the spectator’s identification of participation, resistance, or transformation with the text. The participatory function occurs when the speaker enters into a dialogue with another text or author in order to appropriate its message. This occurs for example when Else refers to Otto Flake, Gottfried Benn, Thomas Mann, Jacob Burckhardt, Bertha von Suttner, and Henri Dunant. In all

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these instances Else has become Hochhuth’s mouthpiece, reflecting the author’s desire to re-evaluate these writers. On Flake’s death in 1963, Hochhuth wrote an obituary, accusing German postwar writers of virtually ostracizing a whole generation of authors who had been eminent during the Weimar Republic and were silenced on Hitler’s rise to power (1971: 445). In the play Flake is representative of these authors and also serves as a counterpart to Fontane. While Flake wished to liberate Eros, 9 Fontane sought to conceal it behind Wilhelminian convention. Else quotes Flake several times, crediting him with having written the best book on women since the story of her own life (1997: 49). Entering into a dialogue with Flake, she at first attacks his comment that women are “Kopisten-Naturen” (49), but later, to some extent, accepts it: “Gib’s zu, wir halten mehr zu Männern als zu Frauen” (50). This sentence is not meant disparagingly and does not negate the acclaimed virtues of 10 pacifism, emotional balance and universal emancipation. Other characters appear either in association with Fontane (Bismarck, Flake, Mann) or as champions of peace, tolerance, and humanity (Suttner, Dunant, Liebermann), but space does not allow for a fuller discussion of their roles. Burckhardt, however, will be referred to later. The resisting, hostile function of intertextuality is applied in relation to war criminals, but also in the case of characters such as Armand von Ardenne or the German generals as a collective group and, not least, the German Spießbürger, “weil sie ihren Führer so lieben wie ihr Bier und den Geschlechtsverkehr” (15). Common characteristics of this “MännerhäuptlingsGesellschaft” (18) are overweening pride, vanity, and a stupidity that blinds them to their surroundings. Else’s anger is primarily directed at the duel in which her husband shot her lover; a deliberate act, which was pointless and without mercy, a death motivated by an antiquated concept of honor: “Konnte mein Mann nicht honorieren, daß Hartwich nur in die Luft schoß! Honorieren im Wortsinne: ihn ehren, da doch diese Männer-Narren von nichts so quasselten wie von ‘Ehre,’ . . . der blöden ‘Ehre,’ weiß Kaiser und Gott, . . . Riten nicht von Menschen — nein von Platzhirschen” (37). Such considerations lead Else to a condemnation of the Hegelian concept of idea, of Weltgeist and to a rejection of the cognitive principle. She fails to understand why people follow certain ideas and reflects on the origin of the “idea” as such. Ideas are more than the product of the mind and, in pursuing such ideas, we become their victims (29). The most important and most far-reaching aspect of intertextuality lies in its transformative function. Here Fontane and Spielhagen are the most prominent examples, both having used Else as “source” for their respective novels. I will limit my remarks to Fontane. Hochhuth’s general admiration

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for Fontane is well known. He particularly valued his nonconformist directness, as expressed in the formula that it was foolish to conceive of authoritative figures as if they were infallible gods (1996a: 151). Effis Nacht contains fourteen references to Fontane, in eight instances in a critical vein, three times in a positive one, and the rest are descriptive. All criticism of Fontane is also criticism of his age; he is described as “umgebungsblind” and “ahnungslos konventions-hörig” (1997: 27), since he 11 chose his main characters from among the nobility and officer class. Almost all this criticism centers on Fontane’s characterization of Hartwich (39, 51, 84), where the opportunity of portraying a more humane, more civilized personality was lost. Else seems to agree with Gottfried Benn, who criticizes Fontane as “plaisierlich” (anxious to please), since his neglect of the two major human urges, Eros and Thanatos, inhibits a comprehensive development of the human character (1961: 273). Later on Else feels obliged to counter Benn’s harsh verdict, describing Fontane’s avoidance of ultimate truths as “Rücksichtsnahme auf sich, auf andere, ja sogar auf das Leben selbst” (87). Else’s balanced criticism is directed more at the Zeitgeist than at Fontane himself, but surprisingly oblivious to this, Fontane experts launched a fierce attack on Hochhuth. The Fontane ABC, whose author obviously has not understood the dialogic nature of intertextuality, describes Effis Nacht as an unacceptable collection of clichés which were taken to extremes. He suggests that the criticism of the Crampas figure amounted to an exaggerated, ridiculous stylization of the doomed lover into a social figure of saintly dimensions (Neuhaus 1998: 52f). Such criticism seems to justify Hochhuth’s attack on those turn-ofthe-century conventions which were ultimately responsible for two world wars and remnants of which still promote a male-dominated competitive society with its anachronistic code of honor.

Death and Fate This dialogic nature enables Hochhuth to make parallels between Hitler’s “final solution” and the British bombing of civilians, between the death of Hartwich and the young soldier. In all these instances, the event itself is used tangentially, the subject matter being of less significance than the actual context. A particularly good example is Hochhuth’s treatment of female virtues, where Else serves as a device to formulate feminist arguments against a male-dominated war-mongering society whose origins extend beyond Nazi Germany to encompass a fundamentally anthropological issue. In his earlier Hebammen Hochhuth alludes to the ancient myth of Sisyphus, with the ceaseless effort of beauty and

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love aspiring to supremacy over war and destruction, despite the fact that the “rock” will always remain at the entrance to paradise. The need to move this rock keeps the motor of world comedy going (1971: 420f). Else herself has a proud record of having promoted such values. Although over sixty, she fought for permission to work as a nurse at the battlefront during the First World War, challenging those authorities who had no qualms in allowing generals to assume high command at an even more advanced age (1997: 18). She risks listening to enemy radio broadcasts, believing that no general would have the guts to tune into the BBC (17). She also condemns an officer caste that failed to heed the pacifist message of Bertha von Suttner’s Die Waffen nieder (47). However, Hochhuth is careful not to paint an oversimplified picture of all men as morally corrupt and all women as saints. Despite his faults, Armand von Ardenne is characterized as courageous, civilized, and intelligent, Henri Dunant, founder of the Red Cross, is seen as a great visionary, and Bismarck is praised for his social security system and for opposing the Kaiser in the interests of peace and reconciliation. In all these instances, Hochhuth attempts to present a “corrective” view to established conventions, either revitalizing figures who have dropped out of our cultural memory (Flake, Suttner) or portraying them in a different light (Bismarck). Else herself is shown to be tormented by selfrecrimination. She accepts her responsibility for Hartwich’s death and recognizes her part in Germany’s collective guilt for the Holocaust, blaming herself directly for not having attempted to save the painter Max Liebermann’s widow from Nazi persecution (77). The most important dramatic conflict, which serves to bring together the various strands, is that of death and fate. We witness the death of the young soldier, listen to Else’s account of the shooting of her lover, and hear several profound statements on fate and death from the ninetyyear-old protagonist. Such fundamental issues even lead Else to ponder the possibility of eternal life, though she does not review this in a Christian context. The question “Wozu das Ganze” (18) introduces a discussion on what has gone before and what is to come; in her own words “wohin alle sterben” (19), whether our lives are chance or fate. Realizing that she has no answer, she goes back to Fontane’s formula of “too far afield.” Pleading for uncertainty rather than truth, she conceives of human destiny in almost Nietzschean terms as “love of fate,” never being certain of the moment of death. The term “grace” is introduced, the grace of not knowing one’s destiny, and “Arbeit” (labor) is praised as a means of escape from the black hole of depression.

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These issues return Else once more to the dialogical relationship between memory and pride. In Nietzsche’s original quote, pride wins over memory, no doubt in keeping with Nietzsche’s rejection of Socratic intellectual reflection as a life-inhibiting force. However, Nietzsche linked the phenomenon of memory to that of promise; he was not primarily interested in the normative question of whether man is morally duty-bound to keep a promise, but investigated the problem of whether man was capable of making promises at all. His search for a memory of the will turns into the search for the will to power, understood here in Nietzsche’s sense as the will to live. This will becomes the only legitimation for memory, which explains why pride must ultimately prevail over memory. It is difficult to ascertain to what extent Hochhuth followed Nietzsche’s argument. While recognizing the episodic nature of human life and accepting a concept of history free of any teleological purpose, he nevertheless involves his protagonist in agonizing questions of death and fate. The apparent contradiction between an ultimate relativization of truth statements and the moral dimension of a collective memory can only be resolved through another recourse to Nietzsche. The kind of consciousness that will transcend the immediacy of momentary absorption needs to be related to a memory lying outside any socially induced selfindication. Nietzsche defines this as “the sovereign individual . . . liberated again from the morality of custom, autonomous and supra-moral,” capable of adhering to “his own independent protracted will.” His “mastery over himself also necessarily gives him mastery over circumstances, over nature, and over all more short-willed and unreliable creatures” (1964: 2). The central metaphor deployed for the discussion of death, fate, and history is taken from Jacob Burckhardt’s Weltpolitische Betrachtungen. It is the metaphor of the wave that does not advance, but remains in motion on the same spot. The extended metaphor of the wave becomes a symbol of human fate; it is “durchaus ohne Beziehung zu einem Ganzen, einem ‘Gesamtablauf’ den es offenbar in der Natur so wenig gibt wie in der Geschichte” (82). Hochhuth discusses history as a natural phenomenon in great detail in his essay “Wellen: Ist Geschichte Naturgeschichte?” Here the Hegelian, ideological concept of a “Vernunft”-driven Weltgeschichte is related to a pre-Socratic understanding of history without purpose or direction, even lacking the Nietzschean will to power. History is reduced to the formula of Becoming, Flourishing, and Passing away (1996b: 35). However, just as in Effis Nacht, Hochhuth seems to recognize the dangers of committing himself to a concept of history that lacks all transcendental aspects. With Thomas Mann and Burckhardt he feels compelled to accept a certain, though indefinable, notion of metaphysics: “Es fiele mir nie ein,

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den zentralen Wert des Metaphysischen, ja seine Unersetzlichkeit für den seelischen Haushalt des Menschen zu leugnen” (36). It would therefore be too facile to relate Hochhuth’s image of waves to the Heraclitean formula of panta rei: everything flows. It would also be misleading to relate it simply to the current debate on posthistoire, though some similarities seem to offer themselves: the rejection of Hegelian world history, the view of culture as inclusive of nature and death, and the refusal to search for a meaning in individual lives or in history (Niethammer 1989: 9). It seems more plausible that Hochhuth used Burckhardt’s metaphor to lend greater depth to Fontane’s concept of the relativity of all truth statements. And yet, such relativism, Hochhuth seems to suggest, is no longer appropriate to twentieth-century history, to the singularity of the Holocaust. While Hochhuth himself cannot provide sense or meaning to the crimes committed in the name of Germany, Else offers a simple, but profoundly human alternative to man’s failure to make sense of such death and destruction: service to those who are suffering and are in need of consolation. With this in mind, she calls on Henri Dunant as her last witness, the most important individual ever known to her, who used his wealth for the benefit of wounded and interned soldiers. Else expresses Fontane’s relativism in her own way: War doch Gutes am Christentum . . . daß es den Wert des Irdischen überhaupt relativiert . . . denn nähme man’s noch ernster, alles Irdische, . . . wie könnte man sich auch nur einigermaßen abfinden damit, daß man weg muß von der Erde in die — Erde. (74)

Such mediated relativism leads to the only touch of humor in the monologue, significantly quoted in dialect. An Austrian professor, forced to live in Zurich, answers a reporter’s question as to how he likes life in Switzerland with the evasive response: “Ach wissen Sie — ich bin halt überall a bissl ungern!” (57) Such humorous resignation would have also been acceptable to Fontane, without offending the moral responsibility that Hochhuth places on our collective memory.

Notes 1

Cf. Glaser (1995), especially the chapter “Wir sind noch einmal davongekommen” (112–17).

2

The title of a famous poem by Hans Egon Holthusen, which suggests that we must leave behind the past and start a new beginning (cf. Hahn 1999). 3

For the original Nietzsche quotation, see Nietzsche (1960: 635).

4

Berliner Morgenpost (28 January 1999).

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5

I want to thank the Bayerische Rundfunk for its assistance in obtaining a video copy of the play (“Rolf Hochhuth, Effis Nacht, Fernsehfassung der Uraufführung, Bayerische Theaterakademie im Prinzregententheater München, Maria Becker als Elisabeth von Ardenne, Fernsehfassung und Inszenierung August Everding, Fernsehregie Andreas Missler-Morell”). 6

Cf. Schiller: “Die Gerichtsbarkeit der Bühne fängt an, wo das Gebiet der weltlichen Gesetze sich endigt. Wenn die Gerechtigkeit für Gold verblindet und im Solde der Laster schwelgt, wenn die Frevel der Mächtigen ihrer Ohnmacht spotten und Menschenfurcht den Arm der Obrigkeit bindet, übernimmt die Schaubühne Schwert und Waage und reißt die Laster vor einen schrecklichen Richterstuhl” (1905: 91). 7

Quoted in Lachmann (1996: 799). The concept of “mémoire collective” was developed by Maurice Halbwachs (1968). For further detail, see Arnold and Detering (1996: 444). 8

9

Flake is also mentioned as the first person to attempt his Ph.D. on Fontane (1997: 88).

10

Hochhuth seems to agree here with Germaine Greer, insisting that women must find a model in opposition to the world of men rather than seeking access to this world (Hochhuth 1973: 297). 11 Even Hartwich had to be transformed into an officer and nobleman, despite the fact that he was a well-known intellectual (25).

Works Cited Arnold, Heinz Ludwig, and Heinrich Detering, eds. Grundzüge der Literaturwissenschaft. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 1996. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Probleme der Poetik Dostoevskijs. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1971. ———. Rabelais and his World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968. Benn, Gottfried. “Figuren.” In Gesammelte Werke. Vol. 4. Wiesbaden: Limes, 1961. Fiedler, Leslie A. “Cross the Border, Close the Gap.” In Cunliffe, Marcus, ed. American Literature since 1900. London: Sphere, 1975, 344–66. Foucault, Michel. Der Wille zum Wissen (Sexualität und Wahrheit I). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977. Glaser, Hermann. 1945, Ein Lesebuch. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1995. Grass, Günter. “Ben and Dieter: a Speech to the Israelis.” In Speak Out! Trans. Mannheim, Ralph. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968. ———. Die Blechtrommel. Darmstadt and Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1959. Hahn, Hans-Joachim. “‘Literarische Gesinnungsnazis’ oder spätbürgerliche Formalisten? Die Gruppe 47 als deutsches Problem.” In The Gruppe 47 Fifty Years On: A Re-Appraisal of its Literary and Political Significance, ed. Stuart Parkes and John J. White. Amsterdam/Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1999, 279–93.

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Halbwachs, Maurice. La mémoire collective. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968. Hochhuth, Rolf. Effis Nacht, Monolog. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1997. ———. “Frauen und Mütter, Bachofen und Germaine Greer.” In Lysistrate und die Nato. Komödie. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1973, 297. ———. “‘Soll das Theater die heutige Welt darstellen?’ Antworten auf Fragen der Zeitschrift Theater heute.” In Hebammen, Komödie, Erzählungen, Gedichte, Essays. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1971. ———. Der Stellvertreter: Schauspiel. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1963. ———. Und Brecht sah das Tragische nicht. Plädoyers, Polemiken, Profile. Ed. Walter Homolka and Rosemarie von dem Knesebeck. Munich: Knesebeck, 1996a. ———. Wellen. Artgenossen, Zeitgenossen, Hausgenossen. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1996b. Lachmann, Renate. “Intertextualität.” In Fischer Lexikon Literatur. Vol. 2. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1996. Lettau, Reinhard, ed. Die Gruppe 47, ein Handbuch. Bericht, Kritik, Polemik. Neuwied und Berlin: Luchterhand, 1967. Neuhaus, Stefan. Fontane ABC. Leipzig: Reclam, 1998. Niethammer, Lutz. Posthistoire. Ist die Geschichte zu Ende? Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1989. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Jenseits von Gut und Böse. In Friedrich Nietzsche: Werke in drei Bänden, ed. Karl Schlechta. Munich: Carl Hanser, 1960. ———. On the Genealogy of Morals. In The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Oscar Levy. Vol. 2. New York: Russel & Russel, 1964. Reich-Ranicki, Marcel. “Günter Grass, unser grimmiger Idylliker.” In Deutsche Literatur in West und Ost: Prosa seit 1945. Munich: Piper, 1963. Richter, Hans Werner. “Literatur im Interregnum.” Der Ruf 1:15 (15 March 1947). Schiller, Friedrich. “Die Schaubühne als moralische Anstalt betrachtet.” In Sämtliche Werke (Säkularausgabe). Vol. 11. Stuttgart and Berlin: Cotta, 1905. Schlink, Bernhard. The Reader. Trans. Carol Brown Janeway. London: Phoenix House, 1997. ———. Der Vorleser. Diogenes: Zurich, 1995. Starkmann, Alfred. “Rolf Hochhuth mit Effi zu Hitler.” Die Welt, 28 March 1996. Wolf, Christa. Kindheitsmuster. Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau, 1976.

Stefan Heym and GDR Cultural Politics Reinhard K. Zachau

Creating the Base for Socialism (1945–1953)

F

OR YEARS STEFAN HEYM led a Kafkaesque existence in the German Democratic Republic, where he lived and wrote his novels about people under socialism, but where most of his books were not published. Instead, all his novels were published in the West, where he became a hero and the most important spokesman for a free socialism in the GDR. In West Germany Heym was known as the ultimate “nonperson,” somebody who existed physically, but was not recognized as a person by East Germany’s Socialist Unity Party (SED). In this essay I will attempt to show how Heym was forced into this paradoxical situation. I will explore the political forces behind it, and what biographical conditions led to this conflict. The literature of the new GDR depended on the political conditions set by the ruling party, the SED, similar to those for Soviet literature during the 1930s. The first political slogan was not a Marxist doctrine but the general invitation “Let us conquer the past,” which invited accomplished exiled writers back to East Germany. Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Arnold Zweig, Lion Feuchtwanger, Bertolt Brecht, Johannes R. Becher, Willy Bredel, and Anna Seghers were all welcomed as pioneers of a proletarian revolutionary literature. According to Wilhelm Pieck, the GDR’s first president, the new state wanted to integrate and merge all antifascist and democratic forces, no matter of what party or religious affiliation, no matter whether they were working class or intellectual, farmer or laborer, in order to establish a unity of all creative people (quoted in Keßler and Staufenbiel 1965: 73). Cultural politics was seen at that time as a large framework under which everybody should be welcome. However, Pieck’s tactical approach should not be mistaken with a western liberal view towards the arts — the Soviet administration knew exactly what it wanted to achieve in East Germany. The GDR’s first prime minister Otto Grotewohl summarized these intentions at the second meeting of the Kulturbund: “Die Schriftsteller sind die Kampfge-

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nossen der Regierung, die ihre Kunst dem politischen Kampf unterzuordnen haben” (Schubbe 1972: document 27). The first SED party convention in 1949 established the premises for cultural work in the GDR which were then laid out in more detail on the fifth Plenum of the Central Committee from 15–17 March 1951, with its focus on “the struggle against formalism in art and literature” (Schubbe 1972: document 46). The debate continued a discussion in the Soviet Union during the 1930s between traditionalists, who wanted to use nineteenth-century realism as precursor to Socialist Realism, and modernists, who wanted to experiment with form. Georg Lukács is the spokesman of the former position with his attacks on Joyce, Proust, and German Expressionism as “formalistic.” Lukács saw modernists as decadent, with their intention of diverting the workers away from the real issue of understanding their miserable living conditions, and of helping 1 them find a strategy for political change. As a result, the GDR leadership needed Gorky’s and Lukács’s realism to create an “Aufbau” literature that anxiously avoided experimentation and conflict. For exiles such as Brecht and Heym, such a concept violated their own notion of political literature as being critical and not affirmative.

Constructing Socialism Lukács’s interpretation of Socialist Realism collided with the experiences of the returned exiles who had developed their literary forms abroad, in linguistic isolation, but also in the environment of the literary styles of their host countries. To those returning exiles this prescription appeared as an insult, since they had turned to socialism voluntarily and were now forced to follow a decreed art form. When Stefan Heym returned to the GDR from the United States by way of Czechoslovakia in 1952 he soon became involved in this conflict. Heym had fought in the United States army and had written for several American newspapers in Germany’s American Occupation Zone, most notably for the Munich Neue Zeitung. As a committed socialist, he resigned from his post when he was asked to defend the beginning Cold War rift in the US army paper. Instead, he decided to write a novel about his war experiences, entitled The Crusaders (United States and the UK, 1948), Der bittere Lorbeer (the West German edition, 1950), or Kreuzfahrer von heute (the East German edition, 1950). In this book, Heym exposed what he saw as fascist tendencies in the American army that anticipated the breakup of the alliance with the Soviet Union. The Crusaders is Heym’s first openly polemical book, where he did not hide his Marxist perspective. After the mixed reviews for The Crusaders

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and the critical silence about a following pro-Soviet book, The Eyes of Reason (1951), Heym became a notorious leftist and left the United States 2 before being interrogated by the McCarthy Commission. After settling in the GDR, Heym’s first East German political experience was to be the June 1953 uprising where he strongly defended the Soviet intervention. Although tainted by post-Wende hostility, an article of 1994 in the Spiegel is certainly correct in asserting that Heym defended 3 hard-line Stalinism and labor camps during the 1950s. Manfred Jäger was also puzzled that Heym had been so naive to accept Stalin’s Soviet system without criticism, but had chosen to criticize the SED implicitly by refusing to join (1988: 1326–29). Even more puzzling still are Heym’s first stories, The Cannibals, written in the United States and published in East Germany as Die Kannibalen und andere Erzählungen (1953). This abrasive collection of stories about the Korean War may have been his passport into East Germany. Die Kannibalen bears the clear stamp of the Cold War, in which the West is seen as the root of all evil. In one of the stories a Western agent is exposed as being the instigator of an immoral plot to encourage a prominent Eastern scientist to defect. Peter Hutchinson is certainly correct in stating that Heym’s opposition to the Communist Party’s cultural course was evident as early as 1952 (1992: 168). Heym’s journalistic and literary career began in 1953 during the first liberal phase in East Germany after the failed June uprising and after Stalin’s death. During this brief “thaw period” in cultural politics, Alexander Abusch proposed more discussion between writers and the party, while Hans Mayer pleaded for the integration of Kafka’s and Joyce’s work into East German art (Raddatz 1969). Heym, who had shown himself to be a firm supporter of the Stalinist government, was beginning to express unconventional ideas concerning Soviet-prescribed Socialist Realism. Heym’s ambiguous position in GDR culture became clear when he proposed stricter censorship, as he did at the Writer’s Convention in Moscow. A good censorship policy would prevent many poor books from being published in Germany: In der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik wird so mancher Bogen knappen Papiers mit Anhäufungen von Worten bedruckt, die besser unveröffentlicht blieben. Aber woher soll man Zensoren mit der notwendigen Menge an Weisheit, politisch-literarischer Erfahrung und gutem Geschmack nehmen? Die Schriftsteller müssen, durch dauernde Kritik und Selbstkritik, sich ihrer eigenen Verantwortung bewusster werden — das ist die beste Zensur. (Heym 1954)

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This could be read as a tongue-in-cheek approach, although even Heym knew that making jest of the idea of censorship was a dangerous proposition and could hardly endear him to the governing SED. However, from this position of a loyal defender of party politics, Heym began attacking GDR literature as too sterile. This is especially true of the German version of Soviet-style Socialist Realism that had been decreed at the Fifth Writers’ Congress in January 1956. This ruling marked the end of the “playful” creative first phase of GDR cultural politics and included the charge to address contemporary issues: Nur die Methode des sozialistischen Realismus macht es heute möglich, das Neue im Leben, den neuen Menschen in seiner umgestaltenden Kraft darzustellen. . . . Der Kampf um den sozialistischen Aufbau in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, die Auseinandersetzung mit seinen Widersachern, die Konflikte, Charaktere und Helden, die in diesem großen geschichtlichen Ringen sichtbar werden, bieten unserer Literatur unerschöpfliche Stoffe. (Schubbe 1972: 426)

In these first years of constituting a new system of cultural politics, the GDR party leadership would still tolerate critical voices that might help develop a unique GDR literary style. Heym ridiculed elements he saw in the new GDR literature in his essay “Beobachtungen zum literarischen Leben in der DDR”: Das Volk will Unterhaltung, und es will wirklich über seine eigenen Probleme hören und darüber Klarheit gewinnen. . . . Es will dabei nicht alles auf einmal vorgekaut bekommen; es will nicht jene elenden Stopfgänse, in denen alles vom sich nie betrinkenden Aktivisten bis zum edlen jungen Pionier, eitel Wonne und Glück und ein ach so keusches Küßchen von der jungen Traktoristin dazu, nach bekanntem Schema enthalten ist — alles, bis auf die Wirklichkeit. Es will Realismus; ja, es will sozialistischen Realismus — aber nicht den Formelkram, der so oft fälschlich unter der Flagge des sozialistischen Realismus gesegelt ist. (Heym 1953)

Although not speaking out against Socialist Realism per se, Heym decried only its fossilization and he used the word “Formelkram,” a dangerous word in those years, since it normally described works of Western decadence according to Lukács. Heym’s witty play with this word showed its hollow base — instead of formal experimentation, Heym described Socialist Realism as so formalistic that it stifled literary development. Heym followed Brecht, who had taken the lead in refuting the attacks on formalism since his own texts had been assailed. In his first essays concerning GDR literature between 1953 and 1955 Heym attacked two problems: plot development and representa-

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tion of characters. He pointed to his American novels as examples that overcame form problems. Unfortunately, Heym’s first novel to appear in the GDR, Goldsborough (1953), was criticized for having one of his characters fall for a fascist provocation. Enlightened workers do not fall for capitalist provocations, he was told. Since the provocation was the climax of the novel with which he wanted to illustrate the level of conscience the workers had attained, the criticism tore into the core of his writing. Heym considered the representation of “Brüche” in the social system as the main task of the writer. He triumphantly pointed to the June 1953 events as an illustration of such a conflict when GDR society was threatened by capitalism — the East Berlin workers, he claimed, had not understood the provocation any better than the Goldsborough coal miners (1953). Heym used Goldsborough with its detective story as a model for the story of 5 Tage im Juni about the June 1953 uprising, which he called “socialist entertainment literature” (it was not published in the GDR until 1989, appearing in the FRG in 1974). Entertainment literature would have to be realistic, according to Heym. At a certain point, Heym argues, the author has to offer several escape possibilities, which the reader will examine. The author’s skill shows in his ability to demonstrate partisanship despite this seeming objectivity. The social conflict has to be the core of the plot. By understanding the conflict and by identifying with the protagonist, the reader can relate to the political message. According to this principle, one could describe any kind of action literature as good literature if it were written from a partisan socialist position. There is little room for experimentation in Heym’s realistic literature. Heym’s criticism of the GDR concept of the positive hero was even harder to swallow for cultural functionaries. The controversy began with a review of his Mark Twain play Tom Sawyer’s großes Abenteuer, where the hero was criticized for stealing. A positive hero was not supposed to give his viewers a false model. Heym made fun of this socialist perspective: “Der Mensch ist nach dem Sündenfall ein innerlich sehr kompliziertes Wesen geworden, dem mit traktätchenhafter Vorbildliteratur, so erbaulich sie auch sein mag, nicht beizukommen ist” (1953). A complex reader requires complex and realistic characters in order to identify with them. In his essay, Heym compares the characters in his own fiction to marionettes whose strings and artificial size we eventually forget after we have fully immersed ourselves in the illusion of art. His illusionary art is thus quite different from Brecht’s intellectual approach to art that lets the reader participate in the intellectual dialogue. Heym intends mostly to bring more psychological realism to the sterile representation of socialist characters such as the joyful tractor driver.

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The story collection Schatten und Licht (1960) was a case in point for this theory. As a faithful journalist, Heym showed positive aspects of life in West Germany, so much so that Manfred Jäger described this story collection as Heym’s first attempt at a third way between the systems, a true account of the far-reaching implications of Heym’s literary theory of realism and truthfulness. Heym would soon learn, however, that literature cannot limit itself to aesthetic confines — his annotations about literary life were really annotations about major flaws in socialist society uncovered through literature.

From Bitterfeld to the Eleventh Plenary Session (1959–1971) After the uprising in Hungary in 1956, the Soviet Union put an end to liberalization. At the Kulturkonferenz of the SED on 23 and 24 October 1957, the discussion about “revisionist tendencies” in contemporary culture and literature marked the beginning of a true socialist culture in the GDR: “Der sozialistische Realismus ist weder eine Kunstrichtung noch ein Stil, sondern die neue schöpferische Methode der sozialistischen Kunst, die unendlich viele künstlerische Ausdrucksmöglichkeiten birgt” (Schubbe 1972: document 161). The program of the First Bitterfeld Conference of 1959 was laid out with demands to the artists and writers to connect intimately with the life of the working man and to feel as “enthusiastic creators” of stories about their lives. As a consequence of the SED’s first attempt to take charge of cultural politics Wolfgang Harich, the editor of the Deutsche Zeitschrift for Philosophie, was arrested, Georg Lukács’s books were withdrawn, and the philosopher Ernst Bloch lost his appointment at Leipzig and left the GDR. The GDR’s cultural world experienced its only Stalinist show trials, where the main victims were theoreticians (Wolfgang Harich) and administrators (Walter Janka, the head of the Aufbau Verlag, and Gustav Just, the deputy editor of Sonntag) rather than creative artists — although one young author, Erich Loest, also received a prison sentence (Burns 1995: 164). This “frost” or “freeze period” culminated in the first Bitterfeld conference of 24 April 1959. Walter Ulbricht himself demanded in his speech at the convention that the socialist experience be put in the center of writing and that workers should “conquer the heights of culture.” Ulbricht encouraged all interested workers to develop their own writing skills (“Greif zur Feder Kumpel”), a policy that was obviously influenced by the Chinese “Big Leap” policy. Ulbricht stated that social conflicts or antagonisms were not interesting in themselves and that a GDR literature simply concerned with

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antagonistic conflicts would not be supported (Schubbe 1972: document 188). He would support writers concerned with the resolution of such conflicts in literature, writers who would decide to cooperate “enthusiastically with Party, state leadership and the masses.” Ulbricht’s plea to ask ordinary workers to collaborate with socialist policy was considered a way to bypass untrustworthy intellectual writers, perhaps with the hope that a socialist society might eventually get by without intellectuals. This discussion on how to portray and include the worker in the new GDR literature intensified in the following years. The Schriftstellerkongress of 1956, the Kulturkonferenz of 1957 and the two Bitterfeld conferences marked the attempt to create a new socialist GDR literature dominated by the SED and the notion of Socialist Realism as the sole permissible style. Superficially, the party leadership wanted to explore the interest of the workers, who were asked to mail in their ideas. One of these collective responses became famous as the “Nachterstedter Brief,” where the workers of the coal combine Nachterstedt appealed to the GDR authors to write more contemporary books: “Gestalten Sie den werktätigen Menschen so, wie er ist, von Fleisch und Blut, wie er arbeitet, liebt und kämpft. Zeigen Sie den Enthusiasmus, die Leidenschaft und das große Verantwortungsbewusstsein, das die Arbeiter im Kampf um das Neue beseelt” (Heym 1959). Heym responded with a strong attack. He claimed that the authors of this letter covered up contradictions, as was flagrantly evident in the two sentences of the letter. The workers whom Heym had come to know in the GDR were not immersed in enthusiasm for something new: Wenn die Arbeiter vom Schriftsteller verlangen, dass er sie so darstelle, wie sie hier und heute sind, dann kann der Schriftsteller, will er ehrlich sein, nicht allzu viel von “Enthusiasmus,” “Leidenschaft” und “großem Verantwortungsbewusstsein” schreiben. Wenn der Schriftsteller aufgefordert wird, vom Enthusiasmus der Arbeiter, von ihrer Leidenschaft, von ihrem großen Verantwortungsbewusstsein im Kampf um das Neue zu schreiben, wie soll er solchen Arbeitern da Fleisch und Blut geben? — denn in Wirklichkeit ist ihr Fleisch oft genug schwach, und ihr Blut sehnt sich nach allem Möglichen, aber nur selten nach dem “Kampf um das Neue.” (1959)

But gradually Heym realized that socialism had limited possibilities for change and that criticism was only accepted as long as it served a purpose. Therefore Heym decided that the only efficient opposition could come from writers. He demanded that the principles of freedom of expression misused under Stalinism needed to be re-established by writers, not by the party machine: “These questions and conflicts are not

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theoretical matters restricted to the ideological commissions of the party apparatus or its cultural committees” (11 October 1965). The construction of the Berlin Wall solidified the position of the SED, since nobody could escape the dictates of the party, which, however, once again allowed more cultural freedom. Subsequently the philosopher Robert Havemann demanded more freedom of information, the songwriter Wolf Biermann propagated his own approach to communism, and the poet Peter Huchel began to publish Western authors, such as the surrealist poet Paul Celan, in the periodical Sinn und Form. Ernst Fischer resumed the Kafka debate in an essay for Sinn und Form where he praised Kafka for showing alienation phenomena even in socialism, up to then an unheard-of proposal for a socialist society. In 1965, Stefan Heym published another article about his problems with GDR Socialist Realism in the West German paper Die Zeit, entitled “Die Langeweile von Minsk,” which drew more criticism than any of the other critical activities combined. He stated that writers and scientists are the prophets of our time since they have a deeper insight into questions concerning modern society: Jedes Zeitalter hat seine Sprecher, die die Ängste und Hoffnungen der Menschen zum Ausdruck bringen. Im grauen Altertum waren das die Propheten. Heute . . . scheinen Schriftsteller und Naturwissenschaftler diese Funktion zu übernehmen. (29 October 1965)

After ten years of fruitless arguments with the party leadership over his reluctance to use Socialist Realism, Heym was understandably impatient. In his essay he referred to Brecht, who had also been disappointed with Russia’s stale Soviet literature. Brecht had declared there would only be a new and proper Soviet literature once a novel would begin with the sentence: “Minsk ist eine der langweiligsten Städte der Welt.” The realist author has the duty to describe how the world really is. Heym offered a compromise by continuing the use of the term Socialist Realism, to which he attached an ethical dimension: “Sozialistischer Realismus bedeutet, die Wahrheit darzustellen mit der ihr innewohnenden Perspektive, die nach der Natur der Dinge nur eine sozialistische Perspektive sein kann” (1965). He went further by granting the writer and natural scientist the same prophetic qualities as priests had in biblical times. What sounds somewhat absurd at first simply describes Heym’s idea that intellectuals should lead the discourse about social change through their creative powers, an idea that Heym explored further with his biblical Der König David Bericht (1972) and in Ethan’s character of a poet-priest. In his essay, Heym contradicted the supremacy of the party with regard to cultural politics and referred to a higher demand, that of the

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author’s duty to truth. He rejected any anticipated criticism of a narrow perspective: “Für mein Teil habe ich mich immer für eine Weltordnung eingesetzt, in der mir kein Finger vor die Linse gehalten wird, wenn ich die Wahrheit darstellen will” (29 October 1965). With these ideas of truth and truthfulness Heym approached the profile of his Western colleagues. He demanded liberties similar to those of a Western author such as Heinrich Böll: “Der Schriftsteller kann irren, sagt uns Böll, aber in dem Augenblick, wo er, was sich später als Irrtum herausstellen mag, ausspricht, muss er glauben, dass es die reine Wahrheit ist” (1968). Therefore he contradicted the party doctrine of party leadership and proposed a critical cooperation grounded in the author’s obligation to truthfulness. Within ten years, Heym had gone through a regression in the eyes of the SED leadership by introducing the old “bourgeois” rules of parliamentary discussion and confrontation. The editor of Sonntag, Bernt von Kügelken, was the first to pull Heym back to the Marxist platform that truth can never be individually explored, not even by an author. “Truth is dialectic,” is the Marxist doctrine. Quite deliberately Heym had violated the main principle of socialism, that the party should be the spiritual and intellectual leader. Therefore Erich Honecker became Heym’s main accuser. I cite from Honecker’s speech at the Eleventh Plenum of the SED Central Committee in December 1965: Werktätige haben in Briefen gegen Stefan Heym Stellung genommen, weil er zu den ständigen negativen Kritikern der Verhältnisse in der DDR gehört. Er ist offensichtlich nicht bereit, Ratschläge, die ihm mehrfach gegeben worden sind, zu beachten. Er benutzt sein Auftreten in Westdeutschland zur Propagierung seines Romans “Der Tag X,” der wegen seiner völlig falschen Darstellung der Ereignisse des 17. Juni 1953 von den zuständigen Stellen nicht zugelassen werden konnte. Er schreibt Artikel für im Westen erscheinende Zeitschriften und Zeitungen, in denen er das Leben in der Sowjetunion und in der DDR falsch darstellt. Er gibt vor, nur der Wahrheit das Wort zu reden, womit er aber die westlich orientierte “Wahrheit” meint. Die “Wahrheit,” die er verkündet, ist die Behauptung, daß nicht die Arbeiterklasse, sondern nur die Schriftsteller und Wissenschaftler zur Führung der neuen Gesellschaft berufen seien. Doch der Sozialismus ist und bleibt das Werk der von ihrer marxistisch-leninistischen Kampfpartei geführten Arbeiterklasse im Bunde mit allen anderen Werktätigen, einschließlich der Intelligenz. (Schubbe 1972: document 310) 4

In a later Stasi report Heym was regarded as very dangerous because his attacks were always combined with his steadfast belief in socialism. The

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Eleventh Plenum is now considered to be the dividing line between the naïve hopes of the first fifteen years that a socialist Utopian society might be built with the help of intellectuals, and the disappointments of the later years. The Eleventh Plenum was later labeled “Kahlschlagsplenum” since several authors were accused of having left the established literary style, among them Wolf Biermann. Christa Wolf’s reaction was more personal than Heym’s and resulted in months of depression, later reflected in her novel Nachdenken über Christa T. (1969), a passionate statement of the individual’s right to self-determination. Although occasional clashes had occurred earlier they had always been patched up again. But now the rift between intellectual and political leaders became obvious, a rift that was to deepen over the coming years and that contributed largely to the downfall of the GDR “experiment.” And since Stefan Heym was Honecker’s prime target of attack, he gradually became the GDR’s prime dissident, the leader of East Germany’s intellectual opposition. Heym responded to the imposed publication ban by writing several escapist historical novels which receded further and further into history, from 1864, the time of Lassalle, to the revolution of 1848, to the time of the author Daniel Defoe, 1703, and finally to the period of the Old Testament King David. As Marcel Reich-Ranicki was eager to point out, these novels are not really about historical events, but rather criticize contemporary GDR cultural politics: “Im Grunde verwendet er die epische Form lediglich als Verpackung und Vehikel für zeitkritische Befunde und polemisch gemeinte Diagnosen” (1974: 37). As such they posed a challenge to the GDR reader, who became quite skilled in deciphering the intended critical message. The test case for Heym’s perception of the author as social critic became the figure of Ethan in Der König David Bericht. Ethan fails largely because he misunderstands his position in Palestinian society. Unlike the situation in Heym’s historical Lassalle, where prejudice had prevented the protagonist from achieving any position in the Prussian state, Ethan’s social status remains undefined. And so does his character, with distinct traits of Heym himself, a modern intellectual who illustrates the dilemma of the socialist writer. As with Ethan or Lassalle, Heym did not follow the doctrine of the literary bureaucracy, but could not understand the masses either, and therefore the literary text was idealized as standing high above political quarrels. Literature, according to Heym, will eventually demonstrate its own truth and quality. Rejected in the East but praised in the West, Der König David Bericht remains one of Heym’s most popular novels. Marcel Reich-Ranicki wrote:

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Wo Heym auf Hochdramatisches aus ist und mit großen Bogen und feierlichen Akkorden zu arbeiten versucht, wirkt sein Buch eher peinlich. Doch wo er sich auf augenzwinkernden Witz und bittere Ironie verlässt — und das gilt für beträchtliche Teile des Ganzen —, ist sein King David Report lesenswert und auf makabre Weise amüsant. Der Erzähler Heym bewährt sich, wo bei seinem Roman, sagen wir, nicht Bach, sondern Offenbach Pate gestanden hat. (1974: 37–40)

This element of disguising political problems in historical topics became Heym’s trademark, along with his persistent use of English as the preferred language of first publication. The internal calm and restrictions imposed after the building of the Wall led to a new GDR confidence, which resulted in a new (official) literature. Writers of the second GDR generation were taking up true GDR topics for the first time, as in the novels of Hermann Kant (Die Aula, 1965), Karl-Heinz Jakobs (Beschreibung eines Sommers, 1961), Erwin Strittmatter (Ole Bienkopp, 1963), and Erik Neutsch (Spur der Steine, 1964). These new writers were interested in overcoming the thousands of contradictions in the socialist system of the GDR, but they did not want to attack the fundamental flaws in their society. This period of relative peace and prosperity lasted until the end of the Ulbricht period in 1971 when GDR literature had attained such a new selfconfidence that it became attractive to Western readers for the first time.

Honecker’s Beginnings Confident that the social progress made in the 1960s was reflected in the new GDR national literature, Honecker began his reign in the 1970s with further liberalization, and permitted free expression of different opinions, as in one of the most popular GDR texts, Plenzdorf’s Die neuen Leiden des jungen Werther (1972). Soon Plenzdorf, however, was accused of providing a negative model that would mislead young people and encourage individualism. Volker Braun’s Unvollendete Geschichte (1975) presented a similar story. Writers no longer referred to the classics of German literature, such as Goethe’s Werther (Burns 1995: 172). The classical omniscient narrator was no longer needed in a crumbling socialist world. Christa Wolf went even further in introducing subversive classical figures such as Kassandra, whose female insights suggest an alternative to the male-dominated world of socialism. With the increased interest in classical fiction, Heym’s historical novels, until now only published in West Germany, could now be published in the GDR: Die Schmähschrift (Leipzig 1974), Lassalle (East Berlin 1974), and

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Der König David Bericht (East Berlin 1973). They represent examples of “subversive writing” through historical fiction (Koller and Werner 1989: 24–25). Due to Heym’s tremendous success in West Germany, they helped establish his reputation as a solid and very entertaining writer who provided much information about socialist society if the reader remained alert. The limitation of Honecker’s policy became apparent in the continued controversy surrounding Heym’s novel 5 Tage im Juni, which according to official re-evaluation indicated Heym’s fundamental misunderstanding of socialist principles. Since the novel deals with Heym’s interpretation of the most important event in GDR history, the continued ban by GDR authorities and Heym’s revisions of the book are an important illustration of the relationship between censor and writer in the GDR. Despite the desperate attempts on both sides to close the gap, the case of this novel shows the impossibility of a dedicated and truthful GDR writer coming to terms with his country, as Herbert Krämer shows (1999). As in most of his novels, Heym personified opposing social forces in two opposing characters, a striking worker, Kallmann, and a formulaic party official, Witte, Heym’s spokesman of a critical socialism. Hutchinson claims that the rejection of 5 Tage im Juni marks this crucial turning point in GDR literature more aptly than does the forced exile of Wolf Biermann in November 1976. As such, Heym’s novel is a significant event in GDR censorship history.

Biermann’s Expulsion As a prominent dissident, Heym became the leading critic of the Biermann expulsion, one of the most destructive acts of the Honecker government. Heym insisted that it was his and any other writer’s right to criticize and defend his own opinion against the socialist monopoly: “Ich lebe nicht in der DDR, um meinen Mund zu halten” (quoted in Nater 1997: 1115–16). He and several other well-known writers subsequently originated the notorious letter of protest against Wolf Biermann’s expulsion. Although most of the other less well-known writers were prosecuted immediately, Heym himself remained untouched initially. The result of this letter was an utter and complete breakdown of relations between intellectuals and SED politicians, as Honecker’s spokesman, Dieter Noll, demonstrated: “Einige wenige kaputte Typen wie die Heym, Seyppel oder Schneider, die da so emsig mit dem Klassenfeind kooperieren . . . repräsentieren gewiß nicht die Schriftsteller unserer Republik” (Noll 1979: 983). In 1979 came the anticipated act of retaliation against Heym. On 12 May 1979, Heym discussed his embattled situation as a writer in the GDR in an interview with the ZDF correspondent Peter van Loyen, mentioning

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that he was afraid of losing his GDR citizenship as well: “Ich möchte sagen, daß ich diese Republik nicht freiwillig verlassen werde” (Kleinschmidt 1979: 676). Van Loyen was immediately expelled from the GDR, because he had arranged what Neues Deutschland described as a conspirational meeting with the former US citizen Stefan Heym without acquiring the necessary permit. This Neues Deutschland statement elicited solidarity among Heym’s colleagues, who issued a letter on his behalf on 16 May 1979, modeled after the Biermann resolution. These included Jurek Becker, Klaus Poche, Klaus Schlesinger, Erich Loest, Kurt Bartsch, Adolf Endler, Dieter Schubert, and Martin Stade, most of whom eventually left the GDR. The following day the city district court of Berlin Köpenick, Heym’s resident district, sentenced the “citizen Heym” to a fine of 9000 MDN for violating the export laws of the GDR, which were based on a new law, now labeled “Lex Collin” or “Lex Heym”: Wer Schriften, Manuskripte oder andere Materialien, die geeignet sind, den Interessen der DDR zu schaden, unter Umgehung von Rechtsvorschriften an Organisationen, Einrichtungen oder Personen im Ausland übergibt oder übergeben läßt, wird mit Freiheitsstrafe bis zu fünf Jahren belegt. (Böhme and Bickerich 1980: 55)

This sentence hides the fact that Heym had once again published a novel in the West, his most critical book to that date, the anti-Stasi book Collin (1979), a general assault on the Stalinistic elements in the GDR. The following day the Neues Deutschland published the decision of the Central Committee that Heym, along with all the other signatories of his 5 support letter, had been expelled from the Writers’ Union. This event finalized the break between writer and state in the GDR. Collin shows the split between the antagonists Collin, the writer, and Urack, the Stasi boss, as Heym’s representation of a bipolar view of the world. Heym’s books all have a Faustian quality of an eternal struggle between Good and Evil, but Collin is his first attempt to describe this struggle within GDR society. There are no capitalists to blame for the failures of socialism, but only closed-minded GDR bureaucrats, such as Erich Mielke, Konrad Naumann, or Erich Honecker. Hence the struggle between Urack and Collin is a struggle between the destructive forces in GDR society, a struggle between narrow-minded petit bourgeois thinking and a more tolerant and worldlier Grand seigneur mentality (such as Heym himself represented). Urack personifies a GDR where the Stasi has become synonymous with the state, a GDR where no utopian perspective is left. Heym’s criticism of the Faustian character Collin centers on his cowardice — he should have protested more against destructive

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developments in GDR society. Although Heym presents Collin’s flaw as a possible route to change in socialism, he later conceded that the UrackCollin conflict might be a built-in eternal conflict of socialism. Thus Collin, although originally intended as a novel inspiring hope, must be read as an accurate description of the major flaw in GDR society.

The GDR in the Eighties By the mid-1980s, large numbers of writers and other “cultural workers,” to use a popular GDR expression, began to leave, among them Erich Loest, Joachim Schädlich, Jürgen Fuchs, Manfred Krug, and Armin Mueller-Stahl. The GDR was beginning to lose its “cultural class” as the Nazis had after 1933. This was the beginning of the end of the GDR. Due to the continuing repression and censorship, the remaining writers turned away from official cultural politics. Instead, a literary GDR underground scene developed in the run-down district of Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin. The three most prominent and coherent dissidents of the final period in GDR culture were Heym, Robert Havemann, and Rudolf Bahro (Woods 1986: 25). Havemann, a former member of the Volkskammer and Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Humboldt University in East Berlin, remained in the GDR until his death in 1982. Rudolf Bahro, a party member, was an economist whose attack on the SED’s brand of socialism in Die Alternative (published in 1977 in West Germany) resulted in his arrest and imprisonment. In Die Alternative, Bahro described the GDR as a “quasi-theocratic” state, and the party was presented as the church that badly needed reform. The final years of the GDR were dominated by Gorbachev’s accession to power in the Soviet Union in 1985 and East Germany’s refusal to accept any changes. Gorbachev’s policy of “new thinking,” embodied in his concepts of glasnost and perestroika, alarmed the SED and gave courage to those in the cultural sphere who favored radical change. At the Tenth Writers’ Congress held in November 1987 in Berlin, Christoph Hein and Günter de Bruyn called for the abolition of the system of censorship, a final attempt to save a socialist culture in the GDR. In those years, Heym went further back into history with his biblical novel Ahasver (published 1981 in West Germany), about the AntiChrist. Ahasver represents Heym’s most ambitious work to that point and continues where Der König David Bericht left off. The notion of two opposing forces in creation, first employed in Collin, is now explored more fully with all its biblical, political, and philosophical ramifications. This book displays a subtle humor that endeared Heym to many Western

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readers. Even the historical novels were no longer published in East Germany in this final “freeze period.” In 1988, Heym wrote his pessimistic autobiography Nachruf, where he expressed his belief that he had established himself as a significant writer in the GDR, but had not been able to bring about much change. Heym’s interest in German unification did not begin with the fall of the Wall, but can be traced back to statements he made during the 1980s, when he had acquired the position as an “official dissident” with frequent appearances on West German television. Actually, Heym developed his independent position in 1984 with his concept of German unification when he proposed a confederation between the GDR and the Federal Republic, an agreement which he saw as a mutual arrangement between the two German states (Heym 1992a). Heym was convinced that a possible unification would bring Germany the opportunity to find its own “homemade” constitution (Koelbl 1989: 116), since for him neither West Germany’s American-inspired democracy nor East Germany’s Soviet socialism were a truly German invention (Scheller 1989). As we know, the political realities of the unification process in 1990 would brush those ideas aside as purely theoretical and the GDR was annexed on strictly Western terms. However, his listeners loved to hear his declarations that West Germany was an American puppet state, a view shared by Western Marxists at that time. In his provocative talk-show appearances, Heym attacked not only the East but also the West with his defense of the Wall and the governing communists, since the consolidation of the GDR required the Wall “for a certain period.” It was obvious that he was admired for this defense by the East German government, as much as he was hated for his independence (Heym 1992b: 96–97) and his ambiguous position between West and East Germany (Heym 1992c: 124–25). He also thought that the GDR would perhaps last forever. Fortunately Heym was wrong — the title of his book Nachruf was perhaps chosen with a purpose expressing a clandestine hope for change. The ambiguous title shows Heym’s hope for a conceivable change in GDR politics — his “Nachruf” could at that time only be understood as an obituary for a GDR gone foul. Heym had never given up this hope for a newer and freer GDR, and in 1989 he helped his fellow citizens find a new direction for GDR society with renewed vigor. Tragically for him, the vision of a freer and independent socialism never materialized, and Heym returned to writing historical fiction about the early Bolshevik functionary Radek.

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Notes 1

See especially Lukács’s nineteenth-century perspective on the novel in his important book The Theory of the Novel: a Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature (1971). 2

For information on Heym’s life in the United States, compare my dissertation “Stefan Heym in Amerika. Eine Untersuchung zu Stefan Heyms Entwicklung im amerikanischen Exil 1933–1952.” University of Pittsburgh, 1978. For information on Heym’s life in the GDR, see Zachau (1982). 3 “Im Kopf sauber,” Der Spiegel 13 (1994): 228. 4

“Informationen über die publizistische Tätigkeit Stefan Heyms.” Stefan Heym Archive Cambridge, locator number A269/24. 5

Neues Deutschland (9 October 1979).

Works Cited Böhme, Erich, and Wolfgang Bickerich. “Warum kein Sozialismus mit zwei Parteien? Der DDR-Schriftsteller Stefan Heym über Abgrenzung und Sozialismus.” Der Spiegel 44 (27 October 1980): 54–67. Burns, Rob, ed. German Cultural Studies: An Introduction. Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 1995. Heym, Inge, and Heinfried Henniger, eds. Stefan Heym, Einmischung. Gespräche, Reden, Essays. Munich: Bertelsmann, 1990. Heym, Stefan. “Beobachtungen zum literarischen Leben in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik.” Berliner Zeitung (29 July 1953). ———. The Cannibals and Other Stories. Leipzig: List, 1957. ———. “Die Darstellung des Menschen.” Berliner Zeitung (13 March 1959). ———. “Das Establishment und die Verantwortung.” In In Sachen Böll. Ansichten und Einsichten, ed. Marcel Reich-Ranicki. Cologne: Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 1968, 41–42. ———. “Gespräch über Literatur.” Tägliche Rundschau (19 August 1954). ———. “Gott, die Wirklichkeit und die Deutschen. Gespräch mit HorstEberhard Richter, Juni 1987.” In Stefan Heym, Einmischung. Gespräche, Reden, Essays, ed. Inge Heym and Heinfried Henniger. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1992c, 124–45. ———. “I Arrive at Socialism by Train.” The Nation (11 October 1965): 229. ———. “Die Langeweile von Minsk.” Die Zeit (29 October 1965). ———. “Stalin verlässt den Raum.” SBZ-Archiv 4 (1965).

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———. “Über Deutschland. Rede auf dem Münchner Podium in den Kammerspielen November 1983.” In Stefan Heym, Einmischung. Gespräche, Reden, Essays, ed. Inge Heym and Heinfried Henniger. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1992a, 25–44. ———. “Über ‘Wege und Umwege.’ Interview mit Hartmut Panskus, Januar 1986.” In Stefan Heym, Einmischung. Gespräche, Reden, Essays, ed. Inge Heym and Heinfried Henniger. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. 1992b, 96–105. Hutchinson, Peter. Stefan Heym: The Perpetual Dissident. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge UP, 1992. Jäger, Manfred. “Stefan Heym zieht Bilanz [about Nachruf].” Deutschland Archiv 12 (1988): 1326–29. Keßler, Horst, and Fred Staufenbiel. Kultur in unserer Zeit. Berlin: Institut für Gesellschaftswissenschaften beim ZK der SED, 1965. Kleinschmidt, Harald. “Die Rache des kleinen Mannes. Zur kulturpolitischen Situation in der DDR im ersten Halbjahr 1979.” Deutschland Archiv 12 (1979): 674–83. Koelbl, Herlinde. “Stefan Heym: Interview.” In Jüdische Porträts, ed. Herlinde Koelbl. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1989, 115–17. Koller, Jürgen, and C. Werner. Zur Kulturpolitik in der DDR: Entwicklung und Tendenzen. Bonn, Bad Godesberg: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 1989. Krämer, Herbert. Ein dreißigjähriger Krieg gegen ein Buch. Zur Publikationsund Rezeptionsgeschichte von Stefan Heyms Roman über den 17. Juni 1953. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 1999. Lukács, Georg. The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971. Nater, Timothy. “Die Menschen müssen sich frei fühlen.” Deutschland Archiv 10 (1977): 1115–16. Noll, Dieter. “Der Ausschluß der neun Schriftsteller. Dieter Noll an Erich Honecker.” Deutschland Archiv 9 (1979): 983 (reprinted from Neues Deutschland, 22 May 1979). Raddatz, Fritz J., ed. Marxismus und Literatur. Eine Dokumentation in drei Bänden. Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1969. Reich-Ranicki, Marcel. “Die Bibel und Stalin: Stefan Heym, Der König David Bericht.” In Zur Literatur der DDR. Munich: Piper, 1974, 37–40. Scheller, Wolf. “Zahlt Miete für die Mauer! Interview.” Stuttgarter Zeitung (3 June 1989). Schubbe, Elimar, ed. Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der SED. Stuttgart: Seewald, 1972.

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Woods, Roger. Opposition in the GDR Under Honecker, 1971–85: An Introduction and Documentation. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986. Zachau, Reinhard. Stefan Heym. Autorenbuch 28. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1982.

Reviving the Dead: Montage and Temporal Dislocation in Karls Enkel’s Liedertheater David Robb

Mensching and Wenzel: Reassessing the Proletarian Tradition

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scene of the GDR in many ways illustrated the interdependence of culture and politics in that state. Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler’s Kampflieder, and indeed the whole tradition of 1920s proletarian artistic protest, was viewed as cultural Erbe and promoted as such. From the birth of the GDR onwards this tradition was nurtured in the schools, the army, and later in the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ)Singegruppen. Two writers who grew up through these institutions were Steffen Mensching (born 1958) and Hans-Eckardt Wenzel (born 1955). They are generally known in the context of the alternative young poets’ scene which emerged in the vicinity of Prenzlauer Berg in East Berlin in the late 1970s. Not much is known, however (outside of insider circles in East Germany), about their activities in the Liedertheater group Karls Enkel. Highly popular in the Liedermacher milieu, their productions between 1977 and 1985 were deemed too risky for publication. Videos and manuscripts survive, however, in the former Lied-Zentrum of the Akademie der Künste in East Berlin. From these one recognizes a clear identification with artistic techniques developed by literary cabaret, dada, and proletarian revue and theatre of the 1920s. A major preoccupation of Wenzel and Mensching in their poetry as in their Liedertheater productions was their reassessment of the proletarian revolutionary tradition. This had always been a subject of great sensitivity in the GDR. After the defeat of German fascism the newly founded state had made an intense effort to acquire a sense of historical identity as a means of legitimizing its own existence. As Karen Leeder writes, “historians insisted on the GDR’s status as legitimate heir to all the HE POLITICAL SONG

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revolutionary, progressive and humanist traditions of German history, especially the ‘Arbeiterbewegung’” (Leeder 1996: 108). In subsequent decades, however, it became increasingly problematic to claim a valid continuity with this tradition. For Volker Braun “the narrative of history [had] degenerated into almost terminal stagnation” (109). History was no longer being viewed in the traditional Marxist sense “as a rationally transparent, dynamic, and linear process, which would ultimately lead to the communist goal” (108). Rather from the late 1960s onwards, there was the acute sense among writers of being “out of step,” of a “gap in time” (Fries 1989: 47). This idea of a break with cultural tradition was expressed by an adoption of modernist, antirealist literary techniques. By the mid-1960s Christa Wolf, for example, had abandoned the tenets of Socialist Realism in favor of the art of interior monologue and montage of multiple time levels. But it was the younger writers, those “born into” 1 (Leeder 1996: 4) the historical standstill, where the contradiction of this hiatus was most keenly experienced. In the poetry of Steffen Mensching, Hans-Eckardt Wenzel, Uwe Kolbe, Jörg Kowalski, and others this resulted in a “subjective acquisition” of history (115). I am going to examine this theme in relation to the stage performances of Wenzel and Mensching’s Liedertheater group Karls Enkel between 1978 and 1985. 2 Displaying a refined aesthetic of montage and disruption, their approach constituted a theatrical transposition of the subjective acquisition of history already evident in their poetry. As teenagers in the Singebewegung both Wenzel and Mensching had experienced the force-feeding of historical facts. This nationwide movement, launched in 1967 by the Oktoberklub along with the FDJ, portrayed the present as the realization of the socialist dream. With the anthem “Sag mir, wo du stehst” and songs under the slogan DDR3 Konkret, a new youth Singeklub culture was brought to the masses. The group Pasaremos sang a Bernd Rump song in 1969 professing their sense of oneness with Party, state and history: “Das ist meine Fahne/ Das ist deine Fahne/ Freunde macht mit/ Wer will sich uns entgegenstellen/ 4 Vorwärts im Schritt.” In “Lied vom Vaterland” in 1972 the Oktoberklub proclaimed: “Kennst Du das Land, wo die Fabriken uns gehören,/ wo der Prometheus schon um fünf aufsteht. / . . . wo sich die Leute alles selber 5 reparieren, weil sie das Werkzeug haben, Wissen und die Macht.” The identification with the mythological Prometheus, appropriated by the SED in DDR-Antike-Rezeption as a “Symbol für Menschliches, Schöpferisches und Zukunftiges” is grotesquely ironic given the blatant conformism of the Oktoberklub (Bernhard 1983: 12). It did not take long, however, before this same young generation experienced their own sense of rupture

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with the revolutionary tradition they championed. At the time of the expatriation of dissident singer Wolf Biermann in November 1976 the group Karls Enkel were forming at the Humboldt University. As Wenzel stated, their basic aim was to escape from the superficiality and clichés that stamped the Singebewegung (Schwarz and Bergholz 1989: 232). Their song program Vorfahrt in 1978 reflected their feeling of being out of step 6 with their inherited traditions. It explored the lives of their elders in the Third Reich and the formation years of the GDR and attempted to relate these to their own experiences in the present. This reflected the trend among young GDR poets in general, as described by Leeder, “to bring together the fragments of a personal history with broader historical events and to use them to create a sense of identity within a social context in the here and now” (1996: 117). Invariably this also entailed a reinterpretation of these historical events whereby unresolved contradictions in the present were unearthed. In Vorfahrt, for example, certain songs referred to legacies of Nazism that in the Aufbau years had been swept under the carpet, as illustrated in “Partei-Lied”: “Hermann war Gott sei Dank nicht in der Partei . . . / Er war auch nicht gegen die Russen an sich . . . / Er hat überhaupt keinen umgebracht . . . / Eigentlich hat er an gar nichts 7 Schuld.” Every line is broken up in performance, the words “nicht” and “kein” repeated or stumbled over: “nicht, nicht in der Partei, . . . nicht, nicht gegen die Russen” to convey that Hermann is not a man with an unblemished past. Such songs are juxtaposed with individual biographies of group members. Wenzel’s “Und lebte mich ein” depicts the GDR youth as simultaneously “Revolutionäre und Beatlesverehrer,” highlighting the problems in aligning every day necessities with greater historical aspirations. In the midst of a stagnating revolution (“Ich lernte vertrösten: 8 das machen wir morgen”), opportunism and conformity have become prerequisites of survival.

Liedertheater The theatrical experimentation in “Partei-Lied” was significant: Karls Enkel’s rejection of official discourse went hand in hand with a rejection of the form of conventional political song performance itself. From 1978 they co-pioneered a form that became known in the GDR as Liedertheater. This new trend was partly a response to the impasse in political song as a result of the Biermann affair. In a taboo-dominated public sphere, words could too easily be censored. New ways had to be found to keep the political song genre alive. Again this was in keeping with the trend among the young poets, as highlighted by Leeder, to break out of the

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rigidified structures — in a metaphorical, artistic sense — that they had been born into. Other pioneers of Liedertheater were the group Schicht, who in 1975 had developed out of the Songgruppe TU Dresden, and Gerhard Gundermann’s Brigade Feuerstein, who in 1978 emerged out of the Singeklub Hoyerswerda. Up until the late 1980s numerous professional and amateur Liedertheater groups were active throughout the GDR. An important meeting place was the annual Werkstatt Lieder und Theater in Dresden organized by Schicht. This event also attracted artists from fields ranging from rock music to mime, puppet theatre, film, and graphic art. In terms of width of spectrum and political contentiousness it had no equal in the GDR (Kirchenwitz 1993: 87). The event was also promoted by the Liedzentrum of the Akademie der Künste der DDR in Berlin run by Karin Wolf, herself formerly a member of Schicht. It was initiated and sponsored by the FDJ as an attempt to politically supervise 9 the Liedertheater trend. But the workshop’s political contentiousness resulted in discontinuation after the FDJ withdrew funding in 1983. The artistic form, however, continued unabated. Another experiment was Brigade Feuerstein’s multimedia “Spektakular” which similarly challenged the traditional frontiers of political song performance. But of all the Liedertheater experiments, Karls Enkel’s was the most innovative. They developed an approach based on theatrical, musical, and textual montage that was to reach its peak of excellence with Die komi10 sche Tragödie des 18. Brumaire in 1983 and Spanier aller Länder in 11 1985. An indispensable asset to Karls Enkel in this respect was their collaboration with Heiner Maaß, who in 1978 was dramaturg at the Volksbühne in Berlin. Invited to their third production Zieharmonie in 12 1979, Maaß saw the song group’s potential and agreed to coach them. This development had the added advantage of giving them a temporary home in the Volksbühne. Despite having won the FDJ Preis der Redaktion Singe for Vorfahrt, they had taken the controversial step of breaking ties with the FDJ after Zieharmonie due to endless disputes over lyrics. Now having to seek their own sponsors in a Liedermacher landscape 13 monopolized by the FDJ, they were grateful for their new contact. Maaß passed his theatrical expertise onto the group between 1978 and 1983. For Wenzel, Mensching, and Stefan Körbel this practical apprenticeship was complemented by the study of Kultur- und Theaterwissenschaft at the Humboldt University. One period of influence was Berlin of the 1920s where the montage technique had been pioneered. A parallel emerges between the young artists of these separate periods in their coming to terms with a dislocated relationship to time and history. For the dadaists the senseless catastrophe

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of the First World War had shattered the illusion of progress and temporal continuity embedded in the ideals of the Enlightenment. The montage aesthetic of the Berlin Dadaists, who included Georg Grosz, John Heartfield, and Walter Mehring, entailed the juxtaposition of random phenomena, reflecting the fragmentation of modern city life devoid of sense or purpose. An example is Mehring’s poem “Achtung Gleisdreieck,” performed at the cabaret Schall und Rauch in late 1919. Its free verse lyrics refer to the chaos of the famous triangular station junction in Berlin where trains and people converge and depart: “Jeder in/Anderer/Richtung und/Achtung! Das/Gleisdreieck” (Mehring 1981: 117–18). The poem is a montage consisting of image snippets of different forms of entertainment, modes of transportation, and political opinions, all of which have nothing in common with each other apart from their random simultaneity in the big city (Jelavich 1996: 146–47). It is interesting to compare this poem to a scene by Karl Valentin. While “Gleisdreieck” celebrates the chaos of simultaneity, Valentin’s “Die neue Verkehrsordnung” reveals it through comical defamiliarization. The disorder caused by the buses, trams, cyclists, and pedestrians all traveling at the same time is resolved by the absurd idea of allocating a certain day in the week for each form of transport, and Sunday for pedestrians. He concludes: “Auf diese Weise könnte nie mehr ein Mensch überfahren werden” (Valentin 1978: 34). Thus, Valentin reflects the fragmentation and discontinuity of modern city life by taking it to a comical extreme. As Walter Benjamin wrote, Valentin’s clowning had greatly influenced Brecht in the development of his defamiliarization effect (cf. Benjamin 1973: 115). Now in the GDR Karls Enkel stepped into this line of tradition by executing an “Ästhetik der Brüche” to undermine cultural presumptions of the present. Another major inspiration from the 1920s was the multi-medial aspect of literary cabaret. A political puppet play entitled “Einfach klassisch!” performed at the Schall und Rauch cabaret in 1919 previews the montage aesthetic of GDR Liedertheater. The lyrics by Mehring mocking everyday political life go together with music by Friedrich Holländer and puppets designed by Grosz and executed by Heartfield (Jelavich 1996: 143). Karls Enkel first used puppets for satirical effect in their controver14 sial Hammer=Rehwü of 1982, which subtly criticized the current suppression of the alternative peace movement (Robb 1998: 61). In the scene “Fiktiver Monolog eines Generals in der Trinkerheilanstalt” Dieter Beckert, dressed in a military general’s attire, cradles a skeleton puppet in his arms as he laughs hysterically and expresses his lust for destruction. The following year in Die komische Tragödie des 18. Brumaire puppets grotesquely portray Bonaparte’s death scene while Wenzel

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and Mensching relate quotations from Heine’s Das Buch Le Grand connecting the world of politics to a political farce (Heine 1982: 262). But there were differences from Weimar cabaret: because satirical directness — as in Mehring’s lyrics — was not possible on a GDR stage, performers had to use all the theatricalities at their disposal to make the most of subtle nuances in the frequently coded texts. Liedertheater also differed in key structural respects from the literary cabarets of the 1920s. While the revue format of successive scenes was adopted, there was only one group on stage and a strict thematic line from start to finish, as opposed to an assortment of writers and acts in the Weimar cabarets. Literary items in the latter would moreover often be interspersed with more populistic numbers in order to ensure financial survival (see Lareau 1995). Karls Enkel’s productions, on the other hand, were of a more distinctly literary character, as their treatments of the GDR Erbe poets Heine, Hölderlin, Goethe, Mühsam, and Becher in their various productions indicated. Financial viability was moreover seldom an issue in the GDR as a result of the centrally controlled economy, which vetted 15 the number of professional acts and ensured them adequate provision.

The Influence of Brecht, Eisler, Biermann, and Piscator An even more significant influence than literary cabaret was the tradition of proletarian theater embodied by Bertolt Brecht, Hanns Eisler, and Erwin Piscator. The irony lay in Karls Enkel appropriating the very techniques these artists had used to criticize capitalism, but here to parody real existing socialism in the GDR itself. From Brecht they acquired the aforementioned Verfremdungseffekt, the use of artificial, nonrealistic techniques to highlight a political point. Exaggerated gestures, facial expressions, and irony were now used to emphasize, relativize, or parody utterances. A line of tradition was established back to the Italian mime and mask theater, commedia dell’arte. The grotesque, artificial dimension of clown theater had interested Brecht. Wenzel and Mensching attended seminars on this 16 subject and by the time of their trio of productions Dahin! Dahin! Ein Göte-Abend, Die Hammer=Rehwü, and Neues aus der Da Da eR in 1982 were incorporating a strong clownish element into their show. The surreal clowns’ scene from Brecht’s Badener Lehrstück provided a model for the Weh and Meh duo scenes of the legendary Da Da eR series. Brecht’s “Clownsnummer” functions as an artificial abstraction of a real issue — in this case, people’s inability to help one another in society as it stands. The scene portrays the vicious circle whereby an individual needs help because

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of the social power relationships. But help can only be gained at the price of the reaffirming of these power relationships, which results in further exploitation. The clown Herr Schmitt’s belief that he can preserve his individuality is a delusion since he has already given himself up to the power structure of society; the violent dismemberment of his body — the sawing-off of his feet and the sawing of his head in two (Brecht 1987: 238–40) — by the other clowns Einser and Zweier (who pretend to be helping him) is an expression of this. Through this comical, grotesque abstraction Brecht points to his conclusion that the only solution is to change society (see Knopf 1980: 75–81). This limb-severing motif was used for satirical purposes in the GDR. Biermann used it in his 1963 parody of the SED “Ballade vom Mann, der eigenhändig beide Füße abhackt” (Biermann 1991: 98). Wenzel and Mensching exploited it in their 1982 clowns’ production, Neues aus der Da Da eR (1983). The “Scheißszene” mirrors the clownish vicious circle of the Badener Lehrstück. Here, the clowns are overwhelmed by misery. Meh cures Weh’s GDR blues by hammering a giant nail through his head. Weh proceeds to wrap Meh up completely in cotton padding until he cannot hear the word “Scheiße” that torments him. The clowns’ futile solutions to the problem are a comical abstraction of a no-way-out situation in the GDR. One is politically impotent in face of an unchanging hierarchy but simultaneously — through one’s subservient behavior — also a major contributor to this unbearable situation. Like Herr Schmitt and the characters of Karl Valentin, the suffering of Weh and Meh is comical and ludicrous because, as Lee Baxandall writes of the Badener Lehrstück, it is “endured without comprehension of its causes” (2000: 87). But there is no solution offered, and here we see the main difference from Brecht. Neues aus der Da Da eR is clowns’ theater as opposed to 17 a didactic play. While the tension between the individual and the collective is exposed, the laughter resolves this tension. The audience are not invited, as with Brecht, to change society’s structure, merely to laugh at the ridiculousness of it. Musically, too, Karls Enkel looked to the Brecht and Eisler Kampflieder tradition. Wenzel recalls that Eisler and Biermann (a protégé of Eisler’s at the Berliner Ensemble) had been their chief points of musical orienta18 tion as they attempted to break out of the “Ghetto der Singebewegung.” Above all Karls Enkel learned from Brecht and Eisler to view music as a tool, subordinate to the overall theatrical direction, not as an object of enjoyment in itself. Here one recognizes the strict coaching of Maaß which, for this group of musicians, often involved a painful breaking with old habits. The subjective “Personality-Haltung” of the singer/songwriter,

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for example, had no place in a theater of Verfremdung. From Eisler, Karls Enkel also learned the function of music as a conveyor of meaning. Eisler had maintained that the dialectics of the class struggle could be expressed by music as well as text. This can be seen in the montage of march rhythms, modal church music, and popular jazz in “Solidaritätslied.” While the march provided urgency, the popular jazz maximized communication and simultaneously kept the audience alert by breaking up the rigidity of the march. The ecclesiastical modal elements had associations with collectivity and were used to promote class consciousness (Betz 1982: 80). Similarly in his composition for Tucholsky’s “Lied der Wohltätigkeit” (1928), a light-hearted cabaret chanson style is juxtaposed with the marching and jazz components to underline the sham of the capitalists’ declared good intentions towards the workers. The musical legacy of Biermann, one of Eisler’s most famous pupils, was also apparent in Karls Enkel. “Der Hugenottenfriedhof” (1969) illustrates the use of music to promote dialogic interplay between different textual levels. The song laments the passing away of the revolutionary verve associated with socialist dignitaries such as Brecht, Eisler, and Heartfield, who lie buried in this Berlin cemetery. The change from major to minor key underlines the shift from anecdotal narrative to the melancholy observation: “Wie nah sind uns manche Toten, doch/ Wie 19 tot sind uns manche, die leben.” In “Enfant perdu” (1969), Biermann’s lament for Florian Havemann, who abandoned the GDR for the West, the church tonality of the harmony in the minor key expresses the collective loss and weariness (see Kühn 1980: 127). This mood is abruptly broken up, however, by a change in rhythm to a staccato pulse as Biermann acknowledges the harsh fact of GDR life that departure is a mindset of many. Addressing the father, Robert Havemann, he sings: 20 “Laß Robert, laß sein/ Nee schenk mir kein’ ein!/ Abgang ist überall.” In “Acht Argumente(n) für die Beibehaltung des Namens Stalinallee” (1965) the air-pumping effect of the harmonium conjures up the sound of a carousel and street party celebrations (Kühn 1980: 124). By this use of music Biermann caricatures the gay abandon with which the party will rename streets and towns in order to manipulate history. A further musical aspect which complemented Biermann’s anarchic Spottlieder was his plebeian street-ballad (Bänkellied) accompaniment, a low tradition with subversive connotations. Similarly with Karls Enkel, music could have a supportive or an ironic, undermining function. Forms with certain associations (folk, pop, waltzes, marches, tangos, classical string quartets) could clash with the lyrical content. An example was Wenzel’s performance of Mensching’s “Égalité” in Die Hammer=Rehwü. The rococo

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string arrangement supports the mock innocence of the white clown Wenzel’s delivery. This is, however, contradicted by the profanity of the text which brings the lofty world of leading politicians down to the level of what Bakhtin terms “the bodily lower stratum” (368–436): “Sie hocken auf den Toiletten/ Über den Knien wie du, die Hosen/ Heruntergelassen, ohnmächtige Machtvolle Körper . . . / Ohne Auftrag, in der Einsamkeit/ Der Kacheln der Zelle, allein mit ihren/ Realpolitischen Därmen” (Mensching 1984: 12). A further Weimar influence on GDR Liedertheater was Piscator’s proletarian revue. At university Wenzel and Mensching attended Christa Hasche’s lectures on the Roter Rummel from 1924 and appropriated its form and structure for their own Hammer=Rehwü. The subversive significance of this measure applies equally to their appropriation of Brecht and Eisler: they were exploiting sacred socialist artforms to parody socialist reality in the GDR itself. The proletarian revue and the commedia dell’arte, for example, were both theatrical forms which had reflected class conflict. Now they were appropriated — with significant inversions — to reflect social power relationships in the GDR. For example, Die Hammer=Rehwü begins simi21 larly to a Rote Revue for the 1920s, with a musical overture. Meanwhile the main characters of the revue walk through the audience onto the stage arguing with each other. In the Rote Revue these masked characters personified political concepts such as “das Weltkapital” or were standard types of social groups such as “der Diplomat,” “der Pfaffe,” “der Offizier,” or “der Arbeiter” (Hasche 1980: 107). This device again reflected the Brechtian technique of abstraction to demonstrate a particular issue. In the Hammer=Rehwü the device is copied but with an important difference: instead of the above figures there appear “der Diktator,” “der General,” “der Mitläufer,” and “der Clown.” Neither are there any workers’ songs played, but rather a medley of folk tunes parodied by clownish antics. The message of the proletarian revue is therefore turned on its head to correspond to GDR reality. The revue technique of dismantling (“Demontage”) is used, whereby well-known quotations are cut-up and satirically recast. For example, Wolf Biermann’s “Du, laß dich nicht verhärten, in dieser harten Zeit” becomes “Du, laß dich nicht bescheißen!” Spencer Davis’s “Keep on Running” becomes the “Mitläufer” motto “Halt zur Stange.” Zarah Leander’s “Es wird einmal ein Wunder geschehen” transforms into a parody of the utopian delusions of the GDR leadership. In short, everyday life experience in the GDR is ridiculed. While the hero of the Rote Revue was the worker, the hero of the Hammer=Rehwü is the clown, who even mocks the glorified image of the worker. This was how the group inverted proletarian musical and theatrical tradition for their own purposes.

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The Treatment of the Revolutionary Dead If Karls Enkel looked to proletarian artistic tradition for their formal techniques, it was in the history of this movement where they found their content. A striking leitmotif throughout their work is their treatment of the revolutionary dead. As Leeder writes (1996: 122), the official honoring of the dead in the GDR was so endemic that Heiner Müller had spoken of “einer Diktatur der Toten über die Lebenden” (Müller 1991: 75). Biermann had already addressed this in songs such as “Herr Brecht,” where the vibrance of the playwright’s work is contrasted with the sterile administration work carried out in the archive that bears his name (Biermann 1991: 49). In the previously mentioned song “Der Hugenottenfriedhof” the line “Wie nah sind uns manche Tote doch/ wie tot sind uns manche, die leben” portrays the double edged significance of “the dead.” On the one hand, the poet feels a sense of responsibility towards them, on the other hand, he is bitter at the administrators of a socialist system in which the living are effectively dead, silenced or, like Flori Havemann, exiled to the West (Wapnewski 1980: 93–94). The image of the dead is prominent in productions of Karls Enkel. To establish theatrical communication with their revolutionary ancestors, the group derived much inspiration from the modernist montage aesthetic. Feeling severed from their own line of heritage, Wenzel, Mensching, and Heiner Maaß were interested in Walter Benjamin’s opposition to the idea of history as a linear continuum. In Über den Begriff der Geschichte he states that history can no longer be seen as an empty, homogenous continuity of time: “Die [neuen] Kalender zählen die Zeit also nicht wie Uhren” (Benjamin 1974: 701–2). Instead, particularly in periods of revolution, it reacts explosively with the present, creating what he terms a “Jetztzeit” in which time stands still. Benjamin’s writings had influenced the general trend in GDR literature since the 1960s away from Socialist Realism towards more formalistic approaches. As Emmerich notes, writers and dramatists no longer accepted the continuity between bourgeois humanism and real existing socialism. Instead they began emphasizing the breaks and discontinuities, the noncompatibility of the Erbe with present reality, the parallels between old and new barbarism (1996: 335). This was also apparent in the literary appropriation of antiquity and in figures such as Philoktet and Odysseus (Müller), Prometheus (Müller, Braun, Fühmann), and Kassandra (Wolf). For such writers and dramatists, history and mythology were viewed as periods of time that projected into the present (357).

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This approach also influenced Karls Enkel. Historical flash points such as the Parisian proletariat’s uprising and defeat in 1848 or the campaign of the International Brigade in Spain would be blended with the present. Here one has an impression of timelessness and is reminded of Benjamin’s observation of “eine geheime Verabredung zwischen den gewesenen Geschlechtern und unserem” (693–94). Controversially, the utopian spirit of their revolutionary forefathers was balanced against the fact of their ultimate failure. This relativized the one-sidedness of the SED’s heroic depiction of its revolutionary heritage, and was reminiscent of Benjamin’s remark about how political regimes recast themselves in the image of glorious past eras. Robespierre, for example, had viewed the French revolutionary state as the reincarnation of Rome (701). Here Benjamin points out the necessity to counteract the danger of the past being molded to conform to the ruling class’s image of the present: “In jeder Epoche muß versucht werden, die Überlieferung von neuem dem Konformismus abzugewinnen, der im Begriff steht, sie zu überwältigen” (695). For Karls Enkel, this danger existed in the GDR’s own historical selfimage. Through music, poetry, and philosophical writings of such moments in revolutionary history, and using Brechtian techniques of montage and disruption, Karls Enkel projected the contradictions of these periods onto the present. This method produced a highly innovative temporal 22 perspective enabling dialogue between present and past. Here the theme of utopia is countered by the recurring motifs of the funeral and the defeat. An early poem by Steffen Mensching entitled “Traumhafter Ausflug mit Rosa L.” already anticipates this. As Leeder writes, the subject’s erotic but unfulfilled encounter with Rosa Luxemburg serves to depict “how far the present falls short of revolutionary aspirations of the past” (1996: 127). Idealistic, youthful, and vibrant images of the heroine standing barefoot amongst the red poppies in a Polish field clash with the theme of funerals (“Marmor, Schleifen und Lilien”) and official remembrances (“Kränzen und Märschen des Winters”) (Mensching 1984: 14–15). The funeral motif provides the focal point of Karls Enkel’s first Liedertheater program in 1979 dedicated to Erich Mühsam and entitled Von meiner 23 Hoffnung laß ich nicht — Der Pilger Mühsam. It begins and ends with Mühsam’s poem “Ehrung der Toten”: “Menschen laßt die Toten ruhn/ und erfüllt ihr Hoffen!” Yearning for utopian change is relativized by the image of death: the cast put on black funeral dress, carry the coffin onto the stage, and Mensching, leader of the funeral procession, announces: “Wir möchten jetzt mit den Trauerfeierlichkeiten beginnen.” Therein lies an unresolvable contradiction: they celebrate Mühsam’s life, but in emphasizing his funeral, Karls Enkel are mourning the loss in the socialist present

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of the utopianism Mühsam stood for. The contradiction runs throughout. Inherent in the title of the Mühsam poem Von meiner Hoffnung laß ich nicht was Wenzel and Mensching’s belief in the possibilities of the individual. This spirit is, however, constantly relativized by the context of performance, that is, GDR reality. In “Gesang des jungen Anarchisten,” for example, they sing: “Von Gesetzen nicht gebunden,/ Ohne Herrn und ohne Staat —/ frei nur kann die Welt gesunden,/ Künftige, durch eure Tat.” Similarly Stefan Körbel’s interpretation of “Der Gefangene,” in emphasizing the refrain, “Sich fügen, heißt lügen,” mirrors the historical parallel of the dangers of servility. The funereal motif is never far away. Mühsam’s German translation of “The International” is sung as a lament, Wenzel beating out a slow rhythm on the guitar. The lines are separated by long theatrical pauses creating a Verfremdung effect. This interpretation relates to Mühsam’s captivity in the Oranienburg concentration camp where, according to F. C. Weiskopf, despite severe beatings by the SA guards and already close to death, he refused to sing the “Horst-Wessel-Lied” and sang 24 “The International” instead. The defamiliarization, however, also provokes the audience to view the protesting sentiments of the song (“Vom Staat und vom Gesetz betrogen,/ in Steuerfesseln eingeschnürt,/ so wird uns Gleichheit vorgelogen/ vom Reichen, der kein Elend spürt” in terms of their historical validity. The production climaxes with the juxtaposition of the “Soldatenlied” with the funeral of Mühsam. The song urges soldiers to turn their weapons against the rulers and to free the world. But this utopianism is countered by Mensching’s announcement of the funeral procession: “Die Revolution ist vorüber. Räumen Sie die Straßen auf. Wir wollen mit den Trauerfeierlichkeiten beginnen.” The production thus ends with an unresolved contradiction. While the positive perspective on the future is sustained, it is held in check by the all25 pervading image of death. Likewise, in Die komische Tragödie des 18. Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte nach Karl Marx the revolutionary dead weigh on the minds of the living. Here Karls Enkel identify with the Parisian proletariat of 1848. Echoing a popular theme of Biermann’s, they imply that the legacy of these true revolutionaries is being betrayed in the real existing socialism of the GDR. But, as in Marx’s Brumaire, the burden of history prevents mankind realizing its aspirations. The focal point is Marx’s statement: “Die Menschen machen ihre eigene Geschichte, aber sie machen sie nicht aus freien Stücken, nicht unter selbstgewählten, sondern unter unmittelbar vorgefundenen, gegebenen und überlieferten Umständen” (Marx 1974: 15). With defamiliarizing performance techniques the time levels of 1848 and 1983 are made

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to converge. During a dramatic musical and lyrical montage of quotations from Brumaire the cast exclaim: “Die Tradition aller toten Geschlechter 26 lastet wie ein Alp auf dem Gehirn der Lebenden.” In their black workers’ suits, top hats, and skull-cap masks, the cast represent precisely these “tote 27 Geschlechter” impatient for change in a stagnating present. What ensues is an image of the subject waiting in vain for history to happen. Leeder writes about the preoccupation with the concept of “waiting” amongst GDR authors such as Heiner Müller in the 1980s, whereby the anticipation and enthusiasm of the Aufbau years had been replaced by “a passive and alienated ‘waiting’” (1996: 53). This is a major theme here too. In the opening scene the cast, representing the Parisian proletariat, sit on ground littered with the debris of the failed uprising. They sing a Wenzel and Mensching text, “Komm unter die großen Brücken der Seine,” which conveys how the historical struggle has brought the workers no further: “Es gibt nichts Neues unter dem Mond/ . . . Die Stadt spie uns aus/ Wir frieren und warten noch immer” (Die komische Tragödie). And in their melancholy adaptation of Strauß and von Gilm’s “Stell auf den Tisch die duftenden Reseden” the new Wenzel and Mensching texts bring the events of 1848 into the “Jetztzeit”: “Alles umsonst . . . / Was bleibt sind Tote, Daten, ein paar Lieder,/ Ein schöner Traum, ein nicht erfüllter Zweck.” In “London, fünfzehnter März dreiundachtzig,” leaping forward in time to 1883, Mensching recites a poetic adaptation of a telegram sent by Engels announcing the death of Marx. Against the background of melancholy music, political resolve to continue the fight is juxtaposed with a hint of disillusion: “Nun — wir/ Müssen’s durchfressen. Wozu/ anders sind wir da. Unsere Courage verlieren/ Wir darum noch nicht. Dein Engels” (1984: 24). With resigned irony the group sing, again to a funeral march accompaniment, an adaptation of Marx’s prediction for future proletarian revolutions (Marx 1974: 15): “Sie werden sich nicht kostümieren/ Und nicht ersticken in Phrasen,/ Sie werden sich selbst kritisieren . . . / Sie werden sich korrigieren. . . .” But the tragedy of history flips over into comical farce as the cast present an updated adaptation of Marx’s lines from Brumaire: “Hegel bemerkt irgendwo, daß alle großen weltgeschichtlichen Tatsachen und Personen sich sozusagen zweimal ereignen. Er hat vergessen, hinzuzufügen: das eine Mal als Tragödie, das andere Mal als Farce” (Marx 1974: 15). In a cheeky allusion to the recurring farce of history in the GDR they sing to an appropriately light-hearted tango accompaniment: “Das ist ein altes Stück mein Kind/ Der Stoff ist bekannt aber neu sind die Stars/ Das eine Mal als Tragödie, das and’re Mal als Farce.”

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A Land in Slumber Utopian fighting spirit is again balanced against the theme of death and defeat in Spanier aller Länder of 1985. This dealt with the role of the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. The heroism is portrayed in the poems and revolutionary songs of writers who had fought on the Republican side. Euphoria and pathos are, however, frequently countered, in the form of montage, with melancholy. As Mensching shouts out “Gestern alles Vergangene . . . Doch heute der Kampf” from W. H. Auden’s “Spanien 37,” the cast, dressed in the uniforms of the Interbrigade, sing Schubert and Uhland’s “Frühlingsglaube” quietly in the background. The pathos of the fighting spirit is doubly relativized, the optimistic refrain “Nun muß sich alles wenden” from “Frühlingsglaube” being contradicted by the sadness of the singing. Again, a moment of revolutionary history is projected onto the “Jetztzeit” of the GDR. On a separate level, the historical conflict is fought out in the dialogues of Wenzel and Mensching in the roles of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Their respective standpoints reflect two opposing views of history, expressed here in a theatrical rendition of the Heine text “Verschiedenartige Geschichtsauffassung” (Heine 1980: 377). The fatalistic belief that history merely repeats itself cyclically is set against the optimistic belief that the Golden Age lies ahead. Heine’s essay, recited in dialogue form by the clowns, points to the pitfalls of the optimistic viewpoint, whereby the present could be seen merely as a means towards the future. This is the pivotal point of Spanier aller Länder. The historical optimism of the Interbrigade fighters can be set against the rife pessimism of the young “waiting” generation in the GDR. On the one hand the Spanier do not wait for the Golden Age to arrive, they seize the present moment and act. On the other hand, the vulnerability of those who adopt this stance is exposed in the comic figures of Quixote and Panza and ultimately in the defeat of the Interbrigade. Like the Parisian proletariat in Brumaire, their utopian aspirations are not met. They are countered with images of sleep and death. Rilke’s “Schlußstück” is adapted as follows: “Groß ist der Tod/ Wir sind die seinen/ Lachenden Munds/ wenn wir uns mitten im Leben meinen/ Wagt er zu weinen/ Mitten in uns.” A dialogue scene of Quixote and Panza relates the dangerous similarity of death and sleep. As they watch the sleeping Republican fighters in the valley below, Quixote observes: “Ein einziges böses Ding hat der Schlaf . . . daß er namlich dem Tode so ähnlich sieht, denn zwischen einem Schlafenden und einem Toten ist nur ein geringer Unterschied.” Here an idea of Walter Benjamin, that Western society had not yet awoken from the dream of the

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nineteenth century, is applied to the GDR (Benjamin 1983). It relates to the retreat into the inner self that Wenzel and Mensching felt so characterized their society. Through this technique of association, the GDR appears as a land in slumber. Spanier aller Länder finishes with the internment of the Interbrigade fighters in the Gurs concentration camp. Don Quixote acknowledges this defeat in his final speech. As in Die komische Tragödie, the levels of past and present blend together and the GDR appears as bereft of any utopian perspective. The ghosts of revolutionary ancestors still weigh heavily, but Wenzel and Mensching’s sense of responsibility towards them cannot be fulfilled because of the constraints of their time. As the “Jetzt noch nicht” sentiment in Mensching’s poem “Für Peter Weiss” provocatively reflects, the GDR in 1985 (unlike Weiss in Die Ästhetik des Widerstands) was simply not yet ready to confront the taboos of the past: “Später, einmal irgendwann/ werden wir die Siegel der Archive brechen./ . . . Irgendwann, hoffentlich bald, aber später,/ Werden wir die ganze Wahrheit 28 ertragen. . . . Einmal, später, jetzt noch nicht” (Spanier). In conclusion, the tradition of political song, agitprop theater, and Dadaesque cabaret in the early twentieth century was linked to a wealth of artistic experimentation and avant-garde communication techniques conceived for the purpose of political subversion. This fact gave rise to an immense contradiction in the GDR state, which viewed the political song as its own revolutionary Erbe, but yet until the late 1960s would not even tolerate formalism in literature, and up until 1989 criminalized subversive political song, as the cases of Biermann, Bettina Wegner, and Stephan Krawczyk showed (Kirchenwitz 1993: 111–44). The poetic ambiguity of Karls Enkel’s philosophical message helped them to escape 29 censorship but this did not diminish the criticism. Exploiting the traditions of protest music and theater in the modernist age, they refined a montage-based aesthetic that questioned the validity of the GDR’s claims towards its own revolutionary heritage.

Notes 1

Here, Leeder refers to Uwe Kolbe’s term “Die Hineingeborenen.” The term also featured in the title of a poetry collection by Kolbe, Hineingeboren: Gedichte 1975– 1979 (1980). 2 Karin Hirdina uses the term “Ästhetik der Brüche” (1984: 38). 3 4

Oktoberklub, “Sag mir wo du stehst,” on Das Beste, CD (Edition Barbarossa, 1995).

Pasaremos, “Lied der Fahne,” on Junge Leute, Junge Lieder, audio recording (VEB Deutsche Schallplatten, 1969).

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5

Oktoberklub, “Lied vom Vaterland,” on Das Beste. Erich Kästner had already used this reference to Goethe with a more satirical purpose in his cabaret song of the 1920s “Kennst du das Land, wo die Kanonen blühn” (on Die kleine Freiheit. Erich Kaestner als Kabarettautor in Originalaufnahmen, CD [Edition Berliner Musenkinder, 1999]).

6

Karls Enkel, “Vorfahrt,” unpublished manuscript and cassette, collected by Karin Wolf (Berlin: Akademie der Künste der DDR, Liedertheater-Dokumentation, Forschungsabteilung Musik/Lied-Zentrum, 1977), unpaginated. 7

“Partei-Lied,” in Karls Enkel, “Vorfahrt.”

8

“Und lebte mich ein,” in Karls Enkel, “Vorfahrt.”

9

“Auswertung der Reihe Werkstatt ‘Lieder & Theater’ 1983” (Berlin: Liedzentrum, Akademie der Künste der DDR). 10

Karls Enkel, “Die komische Tragödie des 18. Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte oder Ohrfeigen sind schlimmer als Dolchstöße nach Karl Marx,” unpublished manuscript and video recording (Berlin: Akademie der Künste der DDR, 1983). 11

Karls Enkel, “Spanier aller Länder,” unpublished manuscript and tape recording (Berlin: Akademie der Künste der DDR, 1985). 12

Karls Enkel, “Zieharmonie,” unpublished manuscript and tape recording (Berlin: Akademie der Künste der DDR, 1979). 13

It is necessary to add here, however, that Wenzel and Mensching had other influential contacts, notably their university tutors Wolfgang Heise and Karin Hirdina, who were also members of the Kulturbund der DDR. The latter organization was later to sponsor their Johannes R. Becher production as well as Die komische Tragödie des 18. Brumaire. 14

Karls Enkel, Wacholder, Dieter Beckert, and Karl Heinz Schulz, unpublished document and video (Berlin: Akademie der Künste der DDR, 1982). 15

This said, Karls Enkel as a political song group were forced to seek sponsorship from unconventional sources such as the Kulturbund der DDR after the FDJ withdrew its support in 1979. Wenzel earned additional income from solo performances and poetry, Mensching also from poetry. 16

These seminars were given by Rudolf Münz at the Humboldt University. This was to change in Karls Enkel’s production Die komische Tragödie of 1983, which combined the clownish with philosophical analysis. Wenzel and Mensching’s post-Wende production Aufenthalt in der Hölle (1992) also reflected this Brechtinspired technique. 17

18

Wenzel, interviewed on “Sag mir wo du stehst,” Rockradio B (20 October 1992). Quoted in Kirchenwitz: 116.

19

Biermann, “Der Hugenottenfriedhof,” on Warte nicht auf beßre Zeiten, CD (Altona: Zweitausendeins, 1996). 20 Biermann, “Enfant perdu,” on Warte nicht auf beßre Zeiten. 21 22

Gasbarra, Felix, “Rote Revue,” quoted in Hasche (1980: 116).

This mirrors the “productive dialogue” which, for Leeder, epitomizes Wenzel and Mensching’s poetry: “one which works on all levels: within the self, with a ‘Du,’ with utopian aspirations for the future, and with history” (1996: 88).

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23

Karls Enkel, “Von meiner Hoffnung laß ich nicht — Der Pilger Mühsam,” unpublished manuscript and video (Berlin: Akademie der Künste der DDR, 1980). 24

F. C. Weiskopf, quoted in concert program for Karls Enkel, Von meiner Hoffnung laß ich nicht. 25

See the account of Wenzel and Mensching’s respective tributes to Mühsam in their own poems (Leeder 1996: 87–88). 26

See Karls Enkel, “Die komische Tragödie des 18. Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte oder Ohrfeigen sind schlimmer als Dolchstöße nach Karl Marx,” 15. 27

See Leeder’s analysis of the Wenzel poem “Amtliches Schuldbekenntnis” (1996: 117). Steffen Mensching, “Für Peter Weiss,” in Tuchfühlung. Gedichte (1987: 20). The words “Jetzt noch nicht” do not appear in the published version. 28

29

A Stasi report on the production Altes aus der Da Da eR reads as follows: “Kritik an den gesellschaftlichen Verhältnissen in der DDR, wenn vorhanden, [ist] stark abstrahiert und gebrochen und so zumeist der Interpretation des Publikums überlassen.” MfS HAXX ZMA 21162. Report from 17 January 1989, BstU, 31.

Works Cited Arnold, Heinz Ludwig, ed. Wolf Biermann. Munich: Edition Text und Kritik, 1980. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and his World. Indiana: Bloomington, 1984. Baxandall, Leo. “Bertolt Brecht’s J. B.” In Brecht Sourcebook, ed. Carol Martin and Henry Bial. London and New York: Routledge, 2000, 84–89. Benjamin, Walter. Gesammelte Schriften Band I.2. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974. ———. Das Passagenwerk. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983. ———. Understanding Brecht. Trans. Anna Bostock. London: NLB, 1973. Bernhardt, Rüdiger. Odysseus’ Tod — Prometheus’ Leben. Antike Mythen in der Literatur der DDR. Halle und Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1983. Betz, Albert. Hanns Eisler Political Musician. Trans. Bill Hopkins. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1982. Biermann, Wolf. Alle Lieder. Cologne: Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 1991. Brecht, Bertolt. Das Badener Lehrstück. In Die Stücke von Bertolt Brecht in einem Band. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987, 235–45. Emmerich, Wolfgang. Kleine Literaturgeschichte der DDR. Erweiterte Neuausgabe. Leipzig: Kiepenheuer, 1996. Fries, Marilyn Sibley, ed. Responses to Christa Wolf: Critical Essays. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1989.

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Hasche, Christa. “Bürgerliche Revue und Roter Rummel. Studien zur Entwicklung massenwirksamen Theaters in den Formen der Revue in Berlin 1903– 1925.” Ph.D. dissertation. Humboldt University: Berlin, 1980. Heine, Heinrich. Buch le Grand. In Reisebilder. Munich: Goldmann, 1982. ———. Werke und Briefe, Bd. 5. Berlin und Weimar: Aufbau, 1980. Hirdina, Karin. “Präzision ohne Pingelichkeit. Wenzel und Mensching im Gespräch mit Karin Hirdina.” Temperamente 4 (1984): 35–43. Jelavich, Peter. Berlin Cabaret. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard UP, 1996. Karls Enkel. “Die komische Tragödie des 18. Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte oder Ohrfeigen sind schlimmer als Dolchstöße nach Karl Marx.” Unpublished manuscript and video recording. Berlin: Akademie der Künste der DDR, 1983. ———. “Spanier aller Länder.” Unpublished manuscript and tape recording. Berlin: Akademie der Künste der DDR, 1985. ———. “Von meiner Hoffnung laß ich nicht — Der Pilger Mühsam.” Unpublished manuscript and video. Berlin: Akademie der Künste der DDR, 1980. ———. “Vorfahrt.” Unpublished manuscript and cassette, collected by Karin Wolf. Berlin: Akademie der Künste der DDR, Liedertheater-Dokumentation, Forschungsabteilung Musik/Lied-Zentrum, 1977. Unpaginated. ———. “Zieharmonie.” Unpublished manuscript and tape recording. Berlin: Akademie der Künste der DDR, 1979. Karls Enkel, Wacholder, Dieter Beckert, and Karl Heinz Schulz. “Die Hammer=Rehwü.” Unpublished document and video. Berlin: Akademie der Künste der DDR, 1982. Kirchenwitz, Lutz. Folk, Chanson und Liedermacher in der DDR. Berlin: Dietz, 1993. Knopf, Jan. Das Brecht-Handbuch. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1980. Kolbe, Uwe. Hineingeboren: Gedichte 1975–1979. Berlin und Weimar: Aufbau, 1980. Kühn, Georg-Friedrich. “Kutsche und Kutscher. Die Musik des Wolf Biermanns.” In Wolf Biermann, ed. Heinz Ludwig Arnold. Munich: Edition Text und Kritik, 1980, 106–31. Lareau, Alan. The Wild Stage: Literary Cabarets of the Weimar Republic. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1995. Leeder, Karen. Breaking Boundaries: A New Generation of Poets in the GDR. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Marx, Karl. Der achtzehnte Brumaire. Berlin: Henschel, 1974. Mehring, Walter. “Achtung Gleisdreieck.” In Chronik der Lustbarkeiten. Die Lieder, Gedichte und Chansons 1918–1933. Düsseldorf: Claassen, 1981, 117–18.

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Mensching, Steffen. Erinnerung an eine Milchglasscheibe. Gedichte. Halle and Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1984. ———. Tuchfühlung. Gedichte. Halle and Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1987. Müller, Heiner. “Das Böse ist die Zukunft.” In Jenseits der Nation. Berlin: Rotbuch, 1991, 69–81. Robb, David. Zwei Clowns im Lande des verlorenen Lachens. Berlin: Ch. Links, 1998. Schwarz, Petra, and Wilfried Bergholz. Liederleute. Berlin: Lied der Zeit, 1989. Valentin, Karl. “Auf dem Marienplatz. Die neue Verkehrsordnung.” In Alles von Karl Valentin, ed. Michael Schulte. Munich and Zurich: Piper, 1978, 34. Wapnewski, Peter. “Wolf Biermann: ein deutscher Liedermacher.” In Wolf Biermann, ed. Heinz Ludwig Arnold. Munich: Edition Text und Kritik, 1980, 67–105. Wenzel, Hans-Eckardt, and Steffen Mensching. Allerletztes aus der Da Da eR/Hundekomödie. Halle and Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1991.

Living Without Utopia: Four Women Writers’ Responses to the Demise of the GDR Gisela Shaw

Ideology and Utopia

I

T WAS IN 1929, sixty years before the collapse of the German Democratic Republic, when the world economic crisis was picking up momentum and social and political tensions in Germany were rising fast, that the sociologist Karl Mannheim published his seminal work Ideologie und Utopie. Here Mannheim explores the significance of the utopian elements in our thinking and our experience, attributing to them a real impact on people’s actions and on social reality. Talking about his own time, he notes a disappearance of the utopian element, an absence of suspense, as politics is reduced to economics, our view of the world ceases to be holistic and is broken up into technical fragments, and creativity is replaced by mere repetition. His treatise ends with a nightmarish vision of a future world without utopias, “eine Welt, die gleichsam mit sich fertig geworden ist und sich stets nur reproduziert” (249):

Das Verschwinden der Utopie bringt eine statische Sachlichkeit zustande, in der der Mensch selbst zur Sache wird. Es entstünde die größte Paradoxie, die denkbar ist, daß nämlich der Mensch der rationalsten Sachbeherrschung zum Menschen der Triebe wird, daß der Mensch, der nach einer so langen opfervollen und heroischen Entwicklung die höchste Stufe der Bewußtheit erreicht hat — in der bereits Geschichte nicht blindes Schicksal, sondern eigene Schöpfung wird —, mit dem Aufgeben der verschiedenen Gestalten der Utopie den Willen zur Geschichte und damit den Blick in die Geschichte verliert. (249–50)

The German Democratic Republic and its socialist order established in 1949 required a utopia to achieve legitimacy — the utopia of a society that displayed two key features. First, it was to provide a classless society free from exploitation, where individuals’ interests coincide with those

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of the collective and each individual is able to develop freely. Second, that society would have a mission to fight fascism in all its manifestations. Although from the beginning there was a wide discrepancy between this socialist utopia and reality in the GDR, and although the hope of reality at least moving in the direction of utopia became ever more illusory, the common goal continued to provide for many intellectuals and writers the core of their sense of identity and the source of their intellectual and creative drive. The fact that the Socialist Unity Party from the start consistently presented the doctrine of communism as the only alternative to fascism made it difficult for doubt or criticism to be raised by a generation deeply shocked by having been witnesses and victims of recent fascist crime. The great common cause was bound to take precedence over any inclination to dissent. The aim appeared to justify the means. This applied particularly to the so-called “middle generation” for whom entry to adulthood had coincided with the creation of the German Democratic Republic. For members of this generation the GDR was their country. Authors such as Christa Wolf, Franz Fühmann, Volker Braun, and Irmtraud Morgner accepted and internalized the party’s expectation of their active contribution to the grand socialist experiment. However, from the mid-1960s on, hopes of the regime’s genuine commitment to their declared ideals waned. A massive exodus to the West began in the wake of the so-called “Biermann affair” in 1976, when the singer and poet Wolf Biermann, a committed communist, was expatriated while on a concert tour in the Federal Republic of Germany. Those who stayed on found themselves sinking into ever deeper despair in the face of a seemingly insuperable state of stagnation. However, only few among them, most particularly Franz Fühmann, were able and/or willing to face utter hopelessness rather than cling to a last flicker of hope for a possible reversal of developments. Events in the autumn of 1989 appeared to offer a brief moment in history when a “third way” seemed possible, that is, the realization of “true socialism” in the GDR, a move of social reality towards congruence with utopia. In January 1990, Rowohlt published Die Geschichte ist offen, which captured that short-lived sense of elation. Twenty-two authors documented their experiences of the autumn revolution and their thoughts regarding a possible future for the GDR. Most of them felt sufficiently confident to voice a degree of optimism even though skepticism was already on the increase. The book’s editor Michael Naumann still felt able to sum up the views of his contributors in the words “wir könnten eine Alternative erleben” (9). However, there was no evidence that anyone knew what this alternative to the discredited “really existing

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socialism” might look like. Almost all contributors shared a deep-rooted disgust of capitalism as a social order and a conviction that some socialist utopia was indispensable. But that was where the common ground ended, and differing biographies and personalities ensured a wide range of responses and expectations. This included the seven women among the volume’s contributors. Those who had left the country prior to 1989 (Sarah Kirsch, Monika Maron, and Katja Lange-Müller) saw things differently from those who had decided to stay in the GDR come what may (Helga Königsdorf, Elke Erb, and Rosemarie Zeplin). Someone who had regarded and presented herself as a loyal member of the Socialist Unity Party (Helga Königsdorf) was bound to react differently to its loss of credibility and ultimate disbanding than someone who had cut all bonds with the regime and its people (Monika Maron). Finally, if fascism and anticommunism had had real significance in a person’s life (Monika Maron, Helga Königsdorf) this had of course profoundly colored her view, while for someone born in the 1950s or 1960s (like Gabriele Kachold) the issue had all but lost its existential significance. The first and last free elections for the East Berlin People’s Chamber in March 1990 resulted in a victory of the West German Conservatives. This in turn led to the currency reform in June 1990 and a range of inter-state treaties, each a stepping-stone towards completion of German unity and the end of any hopes for possible new departures. It is true, individuals’ lives were thrown into uncertainty and risk. But “openness” of the kind intended by the title of Naumann’s book had ceased to be a realistic assumption. The socialist experiment in the German Democratic Republic had finally failed. East German writers had been centrally involved in the brief revolutionary period. What was their response to its conclusion? Four books of fiction written by four women authors under the immediate impression of this experience and published between 1992 and 1996 are to provide some answers. The texts are: a slim volume by Helga Königsdorf entitled Gleich neben Afrika, the novel Unter dem Namen Norma by Brigitte Burmeister, Monika Maron’s novel Animal triste, and Ruth Rehmann’s account Unterwegs in fremden Träumen. Begegnungen mit dem andern Deutschland. While the first three authors were writing as citizens of the former GDR, Ruth Rehmann’s perspective is that of a West German. Her book is included here as a reminder that the shock of the failure of socialism in the GDR was not restricted to socialists in eastern Germany but also extended to members of the political left in the Bonn Republic. In what follows, I present brief biographical sketches of these four women writers born between 1922 and 1941 with a view to highlighting

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relevant life experiences and common denominators among them. I will then analyze the four texts, identifying analogies, overlaps, differences, and contrasts in their responses to and treatment of the loss of the socialist utopia, before drawing together the various strands and offering some concluding observations.

Biographical Overviews Ruth Rehmann, Helga Königsdorf, Monika Maron, and Brigitte Burmeister all share a late entry into the world of literary writing after years of successful and intellectually demanding professional activity. They all experienced this step as an act of self-liberation from patriarchal pressure, while the form this liberation took and its impact on the individual varied from case to case. Equally, they all share a deep sense of social commitment, but their responses to the loss of a socialist utopia has taken very different forms. Ruth Rehmann, born in 1922, is almost twenty years older than her three East German colleagues. She grew up in a Protestant vicarage on the lower Rhine, in an atmosphere of loving but increasingly oppressive closeness and unquestioned loyalty to authority. To the child, the social order of the time appeared as God-given, where everyone had their place, including “the Red” and the Jews. Secular authority, whether the Kaiser or Hitler, was to be obeyed unquestioningly. Her father’s death, followed by the chaotic collapse of the German Reich, threw mother and daughter into a long drawn-out crisis characterized by a total loss of outer and inner orientation. Ruth Rehmann tried her hand as a student of art history, German literature, and music. In the 1950s she made a living as a violinist, a teacher, journalist, and interpreter. Her first book, Illusionen, appeared in 1959 when she was thirty-nine years old. In an indirect way it reflects her own experience of emotional oppression, lack of perspective, and search for meaning and fulfillment. Over the next four decades, Rehmann published another seven works of fiction, all of which share a desire, in earlier books sometimes cruel in its relentlessness, to reveal “the truth” and to enlighten and clarify. The German student movement of 1968 and the West German political left had become Ruth Rehmann’s spiritual, emotional, and social refuge that offered a chance to combine social commitment with a search for her own identity. Her self-confidence increased to the extent that she engaged in activities in the public sphere, especially in the peace movement and the Green Party, and in 1983 stood as a Green candidate for the Federal Parliament. The German Democratic Republic, for all its obvious faults, represented for her the living hope for a better society. Although this hope

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was fading from the late 1970s, its end only came with the events and revelations of 1989/90. Rehmann experienced the disintegration of the East German socialist society from close by, an experience made more painful by her realization that the West German left had also abandoned the old ideals. Her book Unterwegs in fremden Träumen can be read as a diary of the loss of her utopia. Her approach to her subject is courageous in its directness, as well as being very personal and unafraid of selfaccusations. It is difficult to think of another West German writer who engaged in this way with recent German history. Helga Königsdorf was born in 1938, sixteen years later than Rehmann, in Thuringia. She studied physics in Jena and Berlin, and went on to do her doctorate and habilitation in the field of mathematics. In 1984 she was awarded a professorship in mathematics by the GDR Academy of Sciences in East Berlin. In an interview, she claimed that literary writing came to her as a “Befreiung vom streng Rationalen,” “eine zweite Geburt,” the breaking out of an “Einengung” (Gaus 1992: 91). Living and working in the fruitful tension between mathematics and literature gave her, so she felt, a space outside reality and its constraints. Communism and the Socialist Unity Party had appealed to her at an early stage in her life as they seemed to offer an opportunity to make up for the bourgeois and nationalistic character of her family background through ideological conformity. The fact that she had joined the party in 1970, just after Soviet tanks had brutally defeated the Prague reformers, reinforces the impression of a modest degree of critical questioning on her part. Nor did disappointment with the regime, although often articulated, ever cause her to question her own loyalty to the Party, her relationship with which she compared to a devout believer’s feelings towards a religious community (90). The collapse of the GDR meant the collapse of her world, the loss of her “Heimat” (83). She became a founder member of the Partei des demokratischen Sozialismus (PDS), the successor party to the SED, and in 1990 stood as a PDS candidate in the Federal parliamentary elections. Königsdorf’s colleague Monika Maron had a very different ideological trajectory. Born in 1941 in Berlin she grew up in a close circle of communist family members and friends. She held a number of positions in the world of television, theater, and the media until, in 1976, the death of her stepfather, a prominent GDR politician, triggered her break with her family, professional career, the regime, and its ideology. She made the decision to become a freelance writer and finally, in 1988, moved to West Berlin. Twenty years later in Pawels Briefe (1999), she described this liberation from patriarchal constraints:

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Ich weiß bis heute nicht genau, warum mir, solange Hellas [Maron’s mother, GS] Mann lebte, alles unmöglich erschien, was ich, als er gestorben war, nach und nach einfach tat, wie ein umgeleiteter Fluß, der sein natürliches Bett wiederfindet, nachdem das künstliche Hindernis aus dem Weg geräumt wurde. Ich schrieb, ich trat aus der SED aus und veröffentlichte mein erstes Buch [Flugasche, 1981], (194–95)

In her own retrospective interpretation of events there were close links between her private rebellion against her parents and grandparents and revelations regarding Stalinist crime in the USSR and in her own country: Als 1968 die Studentenrevolte den einen Teil Deutschlands veränderte, hoffte die Jugend im anderen Teil auf den Prager Frühling, auf einen Sozialismus mit menschlichem Antlitz. Während die einen von ihren Eltern Antworten auf Auschwitz und Buchenwald verlangten, waren für uns die Fragen nach dem Archipel Gulag und nach Bautzen schon hinzugekommen. Die Antworten haben wir selbst finden müssen. (1990: 128)

Intriguingly, the exhilaration at her newly gained freedom also resulted in (short-lived) contacts with the GDR secret police, the Stasi, who in return for her services had offered her a visa for West Berlin and absolute freedom of communication with West German journalists and diplomats (1999: 198). Later on, personal resentment grew to a phobia against her home country, its ideology, and indeed ideologies of any description. Yet the very obsessiveness with which some of her crusades are conducted signal a sense of painful loss and “Heimatlosigkeit” that she cannot allow herself to acknowledge. The nearest to an admission of this kind is to be found in her account of her ambivalent and tortured relationship to Germany and its history in the short text “Ich war ein antifaschistisches Kind” (1990). Looking out from a train window, she had her first glimpse of the river Rhine, flowing “schwer und patriarchalisch . . . zwischen den Weinbergen” (129). It occurred to her for the first time that Germany might not just be a monster or the outcome of an historical accident, but a naturally grown and perfectly legitimate entity; and that a sense of identity based on “Heimat” need not necessarily be equated with what she disparagingly calls “Heimatduselei” (129). Ich habe das Erlebnis lange verschwiegen. Ich mißtraute meinem Gefühl, verdächtigte mich eines plötzlichen Hangs zu Blut und Boden und einer Heimatduselei, die mir immer fremd gewesen war. Inzwischen bin ich die Strecke oft gefahren und habe mein verdächtigtes Gefühl zu dulden gelernt. Ich begann die Frage zuzulassen, ob es nicht doch eine Gegenwart gibt, die Deutschland heißt. (129–30)

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This admission is a rare occurrence in Maron’s work, where any soft emotion is normally concealed behind a tantalizingly brilliant, hard, and often sarcastic surface. The fourth woman writer, Brigitte Burmeister, was born in the Baltic in 1940 and grew up in an atmosphere of conservative bourgeois Protestantism, heightened by emotional commitment to the lost German “Heimat” and resentment against the Soviet Union (Burmeister and Tetzner 1991: 53). She earned a doctorate in French literature and until 1983 held an academic post at the Academy of Sciences of the GDR. She, too, experienced the leap into creative writing as an act of liberation from patriarchal constraints. Unlike Königsdorf, she gave up her scientific career. After years of being subjected to a strict linguistic regime imposed by a scientific and ideological bureaucracy, she rejoiced in creating her own discourse, in “playing” with language, translating images, sounds, and rhythmic sequences into words and in doing so setting free unexpected associations. Initially, she had hoped to be able to create a visual language — “nur kann ich nicht malen” (33). So it had to be verbal language, and according to her own account she “stumbled” into her first book, the novel Anders oder Vom Aufenthalt in der Fremde of 1987. Brigitte Burmeister describes herself as reluctant to join any political grouping. She had joined the communist youth organization, Freie Deutsche Jugend, only after having left school, in an attack of “Opportunismus, aber nun mit dem Schein der Freiwilligkeit” (Burmeister and Tetzner 1991: 54). As a student of French literature in Leipzig she was attracted by the Marxist scientific method, as it appeared to offer an escape from emotional ideological involvement normally associated with communism: So konnte ich, von meiner Ursprungsreligion [dem Christentum (GS)] abgefallen, in das investieren, was doch seinem Anspruch nach nicht des Glaubens bedurfte, sondern allein der kritischen Überprüfung an der Praxis. . . . Also Marxismus, wie ich ihn seit 1968 verstand. (55)

Just like Ruth Rehmann, Burmeister experienced the period of the German student movement as the “most enthusiastic phase” in her life, when she had regular meetings with friends from West Berlin and fully expected the coming of the revolution, which would first topple capitalist systems and subsequently do away with the rotten Stalinist regime in her own country. What distinguishes Burmeister from her three writer colleagues under discussion is that her approach to the end of the GDR and to German unification appears to have been free from damaging emotional upheaval. The reason for this was obvious: in contrast to her three col-

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leagues she had already made the choice of foregoing group security and participation in collective power in favor of personal freedom and individual initiative. The only radical changes affecting her in 1989/90 occurred outside and not inside her. At the same time, there remained alive in her a social commitment, an initial hope against hope that social change might still be an option, and the trust that she herself might make a contribution: Die Vernunft eines Wunsches, einer Hoffnung entspringt nicht dem Augenmaß der Realpolitik, sondern der erlebten Unvernunft von Verhältnissen, die man zu ändern wünscht. Das gilt auch in veränderten Verhältnissen, wie wir sie jetzt haben. (59)

Literature and Utopia The title of Ruth Rehmann’s Unterwegs in fremden Träumen. Begegnungen mit einem anderen Deutschland (1993) articulates a program: a West German author explores the sociopolitical dreams of GDR citizens at the point when their country was about to disappear (for a more detailed analysis, see Shaw 2000a). The experience becomes the more tantalizing as she herself shares these dreams. Their loss affects her no less painfully than it affects many people on the other side of the former Iron Curtain: “Ich habe nicht an den Kommunismus geglaubt, aber sein schäbiges Ende macht mir Angst um der Hoffnungen willen, die mit ihm verschwinden” (269). In this book, undisguisedly autobiographical, a fervent search for historical “truth” is closely intertwined with a subconscious refusal to acknowledge certain facts whenever that search threatens to touch the 1 depths of her own unconscious. Her account starts in 1989 when she tackles a new book project, an attempt to throw light on the origins of the cultural division of Germany into two mutually hostile ideological camps, bringing about a “change of images” between the end of the Second World War and the start of the Cold War (7). For this purpose she sets out to trace in detail the events of the first all-German Writers’ Congress in Berlin in 1947, which was also to be the last and which had ended abruptly in a confrontation between delegates from East and West. However, the archival work never really gets going due to lack of cooperation on the part of the GDR Writers’ Union. It is only in the autumn of 1989 that her hopes of being able to start work properly are raised again. However, to her horror the social upheaval also results in the whole book project beginning to change shape. Rather than repre-

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senting a systematic and detached search for historical truth, it develops into a helpless groping for clarity where there is only confusion, deceit, and self-delusion. This includes a confrontation with her own past that presents her with unexpected and unwanted glimpses of her own life and character. She is engulfed by a tangle of personal memories, half suppressed, half forgotten, of the war and postwar period, fragments bobbing up and down in the stream of her consciousness in a frighteningly uncontrolled manner. Her role as narrator has undergone a drastic change, from impartial chronicler to prejudiced witness and, indeed, accomplice. Nor is it possible to assess past events without taking into account the dramatic and uncontrollable events of the present unfolding around her. Her hopes of creating an orderly and enlightened as well as enlightening account of what really happened in 1947 or, indeed, what is happening in the autumn of 1989, are dashed. There is only darkness, confusion, and hopelessness, a messy intermingling of past and present. Again and again the narrator’s relentless efforts to get to the bottom of things are impeded by her unconscious refusal to let her see the full picture. A striking example is her emotional and seemingly unreasonable reaction to a reading by the East German author-colleague Helga Königsdorf at the German PEN meeting in Kiel in May 1990: Eine mir unbekannte Frau spricht grade, nein, sie klagt, klagt sich an, hat ihr Ich an das Kollektiv verloren, klagt ihrem Ich nach, will es wiederhaben, will es herausholen aus dem Schutt der Utopie, von der sie endgültig genug hat. Soll das eine Beichte sein? Wer, in diesem Raum, ist befugt, Beichten abzunehmen, Buße zu verordnen? Ich will das nicht hören. (23)

She herself is able to sense that her allergic reaction to the “Klagefrau” (24) is in some way connected with her own childhood experience in a Protestant vicarage where confession and repentance formed part of children’s daily routine. But she is unable and/or unwilling to pursue this line of thought. Instead she embarks on a rational analysis of Königsdorf’s behavior, buys and reads two of her books, and scrutinizes the author’s character and situation. She concludes that the socialist system had apparently succeeded in creating and abusing identification with this system by a morally upright minority. This rationalization contrasts starkly with her tactless and hurtful question to her colleague as to whether she realizes that her public act of penance would strike no chord with a Western audience (30). Königsdorf responds with “ein Blitzen von Märtyrerstolz” in her eyes. Meanwhile, Rehmann’s attempts to throw light on the reasons for the ideological split at the Writers’ Congress of 1947 are making little

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progress. To compound her confusion, the German PEN meeting in Kiel in May 1990 is turning into a caricature of the 1947 congress. If in 1947 writers had been calling for a literature of social commitment and derided any art for art’s sake, exiled East German writers now criticized their colleagues who had stayed in the GDR for having introduced ideals, ideologies, utopias, visions, moral attitudes, and hopes into their works, when, so they claimed, the true nature of literature was surely defined by purely aesthetic criteria (24). The narrator is deeply puzzled by the fact that the literary ideal of 1947 has become an object of loathing fifty years later. A narrowing of vision on the part of the combatants in either period seems to be the only remaining common denominator. Nor do interviews conducted in the summer and autumn of 1990 with surviving actors of the 1947 congress help to explain how the deadly confrontation in 1947 might have come about. Key witnesses display not the slightest interest in “the truth,” while contributing to the narrator’s sense of helpless confusion. Thus Melvin J. Lasky, the speaker of 1947 who had brought about the break-up of the congress, “läßt 40 Jahre Geschichte verschwinden wie der Zauberer das Kaninchen in seinem weiten Ärmel verschwinden läßt” (166). Stephan Hermlin, in 1947 the much-hailed representative of the young, now a distinguished elderly gentleman of some fame, lets down his visor the moment her questions are not to his liking. His response is not a reply in answer to her question “sondern das Geräusch des Aufprallens unerwünschter Worte an einen Panzer” (246). Finally, Wolfgang Harich, at twenty-three the youngest delegate at the 1947 congress, is now obsessively engaged in clearing his name of any blame in the context of the 1956 Stalinist trial of Walter Janka. Everything thereafter appears to have been wiped from his memory. What keeps him going is his greed for an audience and for followers. The narrator capitulates. “The truth” will never be known. The book finishes on New Year’s Eve 1990 with the narrator confessing to herself that having explored the dreams of others she has also explored the remaining fragments of her own dream, the dream of an alternative to the capitalist society of the Federal Republic of Germany. This dream has now lost its meaning. A painful thought crosses her mind: might it be the case that she had avoided looking closely at reality in order not to endanger her own hopes (268)? In the light of her own account this painful question becomes a purely rhetorical one. Reading Helga Königsdorf’s text Gleich neben Afrika of 1992, one is struck by a similar drive to identify “the truth” amidst the debris of events, perceptions, and shattered dreams following the end of the GDR. The story begins and ends in 1992, with the first-person narrator — a

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GDR woman author born in the same year as Helga Königsdorf — having taken refuge from German reality on a banana plantation on an island off the coast of Africa. The author’s choice of title and location invites us to read her book in the light of a literary tradition of utopian thinking where Africa has come to stand for a sense of loss of “Heimat,” for a longing for lack of oppression, for warmth and a safe place, and for the attempt to rescue whatever remains of utopia and the future (see Heukenkamp 1988 and 1991). This tradition was started in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (Friedrich Hölderlin, Jean Paul, Goethe) and was revived by GDR authors in the 1970s and 1980s. Volker Braun in particular resorted to it to encapsulate his determination not to abandon all hope of the possibility of social reform, however deep his despair at what he was experiencing. In his poem Das innerste Afrika (1987: 61–63), retreat into “the innermost Africa” represents a retreat into his innermost self, to achieve reconciliation with himself and with nature, and to recover his own identity. While Braun continued to refuse to give up hope against all the odds even after the collapse of Eastern Bloc socialism (1998: 180), Königsdorf’s narrator speaking in 1992 realizes that the island “just off the coast of Africa” has ceased to offer a safe refuge. All that remains is to wait for the end to come. The slim volume is for the most part made up of flashbacks into her life, starting with the ominous statement, “Neunzehnhunderteinundneunzig begann bei uns die Marktwirtschaft” (1992: 12). Her view of what has gone before has suffered a severe blow. “Das Alte” (including her own previous persona) has become unfamiliar and repulsive. GDR society appears at best abstruse, faded, and irrelevant, at worst pathetic, miserable, murderous, and absurd. The narrator acknowledges her own involvement and guilt in all this, her refusal to see what was really going on, and her refusal to acknowledge unwelcome truths: “Ich war im Nichtsehen geübt. Im Vernachlässigen. Im Verdrängen von Fakten. Es ging immer um das Große. Um Krieg und Frieden” (80). She is effusive in her selfaccusations: “Wir hatten als Täter nicht das geringste Format” (80). “Wir waren Kreuzritter, denen der Glaube abhanden gekommen war” (81). As for “the new,” the narrator is more than willing to do justice to its positive facets. She mentions a more colorful and more cheerful appearance of the world around her, and more open and freer forms of social communication and contact. But the sad fact remains that the world has also become a cold and unfamiliar place, leaving people feeling isolated and helplessly struggling with innumerable, previously unfamiliar worries. The result is an unbridgeable gap between her emotions of selfalienation, frustration, and sheer rage on the one hand, and on the other

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a rational and possibly even more depressing acceptance that East Germans had only themselves to blame: Wir mußten den Wert des Geldes schätzen lernen. Wir fühlten uns schlecht behandelt und hatten Wut und wußten nicht, wohin mit der Wut. Wer da sagte, es wäre besser, wir hätten die aus dem Westen nicht, der hatte immer noch nicht begriffen, wie knapp wir daran vorbeigekommen waren, uns gegenseitig umzubringen. (13)

Prior to her flight from chaotic Germany, the narrator had made one attempt to regain her sense of identity by returning to the place of her childhood in rural Thuringia. But here, too, the previously familiar has become estranged, and neither physical safety nor peace of mind are more easily available in the rural surroundings of her childhood “Heimat” than they are in the urban environment of Berlin, which has also lost its appeal for her. Once the narrator has reached the island off the coast of Africa with her (female) partner, alienation reaches a climax. She loses all sense of orientation. In particular she experiences a severe discrepancy between her subjective sense of time and objective time. Things that happened only very recently now appear at a nebulous distance. The present offers neither joy nor an outlook to the future. All that remains is a shapeless and endless here and now. Also, she finds it impossible to distinguish between reality and fantasy. The loss of “Heimat” and sense of identity has thrown the narrator into a state of psychological and physical dissolution. This is how the narrative begins: Ich weiß nicht genau, welches Jahr man jetzt schreibt. Ich zähle die Tage schon lange nicht mehr. Nicht einmal die Jahreszeiten kann ich ordnen . . . Manchmal denke ich, daß ich mir alles nur einbilde. Ich stelle mir vor, ich komme zu mir, und siehe da, alles war nur ein Produkt meiner Phantasie. Irgendeine seltene Form von Wahnsinn. In Wirklichkeit bin ich zu Hause . . . Aber da beginnt ein schwarzes Loch. Wo bin ich zu Hause. Ich bin unbehaust. Und eigentlich ist dieser grüne Schatten zwischen den Bananenstauden für einen, der nichts mehr als “sein Zuhause” bezeichnen kann, nicht der schlechteste Aufenthaltsort. (9)

Her emotional bonds with her partner Maria have faded and become meaningless. Maria, she muses, has probably died after having been bitten by a spider — an occurrence which the narrator had watched happening 2 without coming to her friend’s rescue. Even the banana plantation is under threat, being attacked by bulldozers to make room for capitalist tourism. Resigned to her fate, her thoughts, senses, and emotions dulled,

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the “I” awaits her own end. “Alles hat seine Zeit. Wir hatten unsere,” so the story ends (122). Hope, utopia, and future have lost their meaning. The outlook offered in Monika Maron’s novel Animal triste of 1996 is no less bleak, although her starting position is a very different one. Well before 1989/90 she had severed her links with the GDR and therefore experienced that state’s collapse as a personal triumph — the triumph of finding herself on the side of the “victor of history.” There was absolutely nothing she wanted to see preserved. In her book Animal triste the socialist state in East Germany is relegated to purely marginal status, of interest only as the backdrop for the passionate affair between the East Berlin female narrator and her West German lover. The end of the GDR is referred to as the end of a “seltsame[n] Zeit” (30), also more drastically as the end of “die vierzig Jahre Bandenherrschaft” (31). The “Jahr der Freiheit” (88) that followed is seen as having been far too uneventful and tame, wholly “unseltsam[e],” and focusing only “auf Gewißheiten” (98): Es gab neues Geld, neue Ausweise, neue Behörden, neue Gesetze, Uniformen für die Polizei, neue Briefmarken, neue Besitzer, die eigentlich die alten waren, die man zwischendurch aber für vierzig oder dreißig Jahre von ihrem Besitz suspendiert hatte; Straßen und Städte wurden umbenannt, Denkmäler abgerissen und neue Militärbündnisse geschlossen. Mir war das alles nicht genug. (89)

The first-person narrator, a paleontologist working in the Berlin Natural History Museum, had observed with scorn as her fellow citizens were anxiously clinging to the familiar, while she herself was filled with a wild desire for “etwas Gewaltiges,” “eine dramatische Klimaveränderung vielleicht, eine Flutwelle oder eine sonstige Katastrophe, auf jeden Fall etwas, das größer war als der Mensch und sein wechselhaftes Streben” (89). Gradually, this desire had acquired the proportions of “umstürzlerische Gier” (90). Her wish came true in the shape of a passionate love affair with Franz, a colorless, gray-eyed, inconspicuous natural scientist from Ulm. One day he stood next to her in the natural History Museum, like herself deeply engrossed in admiring the beauty of the skeleton of a brachiosaurus, and uttering the words “ein schönes Tier” (24). This was the spark that set alight her passion: Ich weiß noch nicht einmal, ob Liebe einbricht oder ausbricht. Manchmal glaube ich, sie bricht in uns ein wie ein anderes Wesen, das uns monatelang, sogar jahrelang umlauert, bis wir irgendwann, von Erinnerungen oder Träumen heimgesucht, sehnsüchtig unsere Poren

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öffnen, durch die es in Sekunden eindringt und sich mit allem mischt, was unsere Haut umschließt. Oder sie bricht ein wie ein Virus, das sich in uns einrichtet und still verharrt, bis es uns eines Tages anfällig und wehrlos genug findet, um als heillose Krankheit auszubrechen. (28)

The story is told retrospectively after the death of her lover who himself remains a pale silhouette. The tone is set by the narrator’s fascination with the animal qualities and the amoral nature of love, which she regards as “der letzte Rest Natur in uns” under attack by “die ganze menschengemachte Ordnung” (175). Their love is acted out on a bed with sheets with a pattern of a meat-eating plant. The world remains outside, including the protagonist’s daughter and husband who somehow disappear from view. Only the city, in its physical turbulence after the fall of the Wall and the arrival of West German construction firms, seems to do justice to her own inner turbulence, her loss of touch with ordinary reality, and her avid longing for some overwhelming emotional experience: Ich sah zwar die aufgerissenen Straßen, die Kabel und Rohre, die wie verwesende Eingeweide überall herumlagen, die Kräne, die sich wie Saurierskelette über die Dächer beugten; . . . ich war wie ein Stein der stürzenden Gemäuer; so aufgebrochen wie die Straßen der Stadt war ich. Von ihr und mir konnte man zu recht behaupten, wir seien verrückt geworden. (208–9)

Not unlike Königsdorf’s protagonist in Gleich neben Afrika the narrator in Maron’s novel experiences an unbridgeable gap between subjective and objective time. The events are reported as if they had occurred decades earlier (she talks about her present self as being one hundred or perhaps only ninety years old), although readers know that they must have happened within the previous five years. However, a major difference in comparison with Königsdorf’s text lies in the narrator’s active involvement in bringing about and enhancing this discrepancy by all means at her disposal, in order to prevent anything from coming between herself and the memory of her love. For this reason, real life has to be kept out of her vision, any reminders are removed or destroyed. She has taught herself not to remember what she wants to forget; she has ruined her eyes and broken all mirrors in the flat, and long decided “den Episoden meines Lebens keine mehr hinzuzufügen” (10). Instead she continues to reinvent the time with her lover — “so vergeht die Zeit und vergeht doch nicht” (18). Another parallel to Helga Königsdorf’s narrator in Gleich neben Afrika is the protagonist’s response to her lover’s death. She, too, suspects

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herself of having brought it about as jealousy made her push her lover under the bus that killed him. She, too, has lost her ability to feel any sense of guilt, shame, or sadness. The novel ends with a vision of the narrator lying on her bed in the shape of a “eine braunhaarige Äffin mit einer stumpfen Nase und langen Armen” (239), surrounded by patterns of meat-eating plants and ever more large and small animals arriving to keep her company — a true embodiment, so it seems, of Karl Mannheim’s vision of human beings deprived of a utopia and a will to history, mere “Menschen der Triebe.” Maron’s usually relentless attacks on communism in particular and on utopias in general make it difficult to read this story of love and passion “straight.” Rather, one is tempted to construe it as a satire on humankind that is perversely craving for sweeping and wild emotions — and, to achieve this, is even prepared to return to its original animal state, to cast aside as ballast anything that marks humans out as a higher-order creatures, particularly the gift of rational thought. The fact that the object of this passion is gray, inconspicuous, and utterly unremarkable heightens the irony of the situation. Following this train of thought, Animal triste might be and has been read as Maron’s attempt at “Utopiebewältigung” (Krumbholz 1996). However, I would argue that underneath all this irony, sarcasm, and general disillusionment with humankind, a deep unacknowledged sadness on the part of both the narrator and author can occasionally be felt. This comes from a sense of loss, a sense of homelessness, insecurity, and lack of inner orientation in its effect similar to that of Königsdorf but arrived at along a very different route. One passage in the novel explicitly addresses this emotional undercurrent. The lover and his wife had left for a holiday in Scotland, with the narrator staying behind in Berlin on her own. Visiting a female friend of her youth, she is overcome by a longing for the person she once was before her idealism and radical hopes had been buried: Es war eher die Sehnsucht nach der vergangenen Zeit, nach der Zeit vor dem schleichenden Verzicht, der Zeit des Anfangs, als alle Ideale noch erreichbar schienen, als die Aussicht auf eine mittelmäßige Karriere und eine mittelmäßige Ehe noch Abscheu und Verachtung auslösten, als wir noch genau wußten, was wir unbedingt wollten, und was wir niemals tun würden. (1996: 142)

There is, I would argue, very little if any irony running through this particular passage. The narrator’s nostalgia broadly reflects the author’s. Having in an act of enlightened self-liberation renounced her own childhood, family, ideology, and country, thus depriving herself of the core of

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her earlier identity, Maron’s emotional (as opposed to rational and triumphant) self suffered a second blow when that country was itself wiped off the map and the very locus of her sadness removed for ever. In this sense, the novel Animal triste, although perhaps intended as a final attack on all utopia addiction, also offers a glimpse of the author’s emotional vulnerability normally concealed behind a façade of irony and sarcasm. Helga Königsdorf’s former colleague at the East Berlin Academy of Sciences, Brigitte Burmeister, had a very different reaction to the demise of the German Democratic Republic. If Königsdorf felt helplessly exposed to a wholly unexpected and devastating shock, Burmeister was in an enviable situation of relative invulnerability. After all, she had gone through her personal “Wende” a few years prior to the events of 1989/90 when she had turned from a bureaucratic academic career to creative writing. Her first book entitled Anders oder Vom Aufenthalt in der Fremde, a playful experiment with nouveau roman features, had been a private and an artistic declaration of independence, an act of self-liberation from ideological and not least from linguistic patriarchal coercion. In 1989/90 she felt able to observe, register, and record the turbulences around her with strong inner emotional involvement but undistorted by self-doubt and fear of a loss of identity. Her novel Unter dem Namen Norma, published in 1994, is a relaxed and on occasion almost loving attempt to capture glimpses of a society that would soon have changed beyond recognition, “eine Art Rettungsversuch,” as she herself called it in an interview (1999: 99). In contrast to Gleich neben Afrika and Animal triste we are not faced with a total loss of “will to history” (for Karl Mannheim the ultimate and terrifying consequence of a loss of utopia) but with purposeful and sustained efforts to build up a memory bank as a basis and support for shaping the future. The chosen setting is the one Burmeister knows best — the microcosm of a block of flats in East Berlin: Ich wollte das Haus nicht untergehen lassen, in dem ich viele Jahre gewohnt habe, es steht ja immer noch, und seit einigen Monaten hinter Gerüsten zwecks Renovierung. Ich wollte, vielleicht in einer Form leiser Panik, mir bestimmte Sachen noch einmal vergegenwärtigen, bevor sie unter dem Neuen ganz verschwänden. (99)

The potentially traumatic impact of the events of 1989/90 on the reader is mitigated by their being embedded in a wider historical framework, a wider scope (“Spielraum”), which takes away some of their frightening uniqueness and threat. The idea of “Spiel” is central to this book, in terms of both content and form. It defines composition, language and style, sequence of events,

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and constellation of characters. Historically it harks back to the idea of “play” in Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schiller, emphasizing the power of human imagination and spontaneity, unity, and inner infinity, dynamics in the sense of inner ambivalence, freedom, and independence from external determination and the preservation of past and future in the present play time (Shaw 2000b). The creative space within which the story unfolds spans the two centuries separating the French Revolution and the revolution in the GDR, two centuries, that is, that were dominated by the struggle between enlightenment and oppression. The novel is divided into two parts entitled “Am 17. Juni [1953]” and “Am 14. Juli [1789]” respectively. If the date “9. November [1989]” were added in, that is, a key date in the novel itself, then the scope is defined within which the demise of the GDR and what it stood for is being seen and interpreted. A sense of orientation is provided, and inner freedom, curiosity, and playful enjoyment are encouraged. Throughout, faith in what Immanuel Kant described as the “Ausgang der Menschheit aus ihrer selbstverschuldeten Unmündigkeit” provides the light horizon offsetting dark events experienced by many as deeply threatening. Thus the contrast with Helga Königsdorf’s message in Gleich neben Afrika could hardly be greater. Burmeister’s narrator Marianne Ahrend shares with the narrators in Gleich neben Afrika and Animal triste an acute sense of discrepancy between real time and her own subjective sense of time during the first years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. She is conscious of her sense of a long time having passed since she and her friend Norma first crossed the line which only a short while before had been marked by the Wall and the death strip alongside it. Yet her calendar tells her that hardly two and a half years have passed since that evening stroll. This narrator does not feel disorientated by this realization but rather comforted, as it offers tangible evidence that social orders not only come but also go and that even the greatest horrors tend to lose their edge as time passes. Both nature and man-made culture provide reliable tools of orientation capable of withstanding even the most absurd of human actions. The song of the blackbird in the inner courtyard can be relied on to be back every year “unter welcher neuen Ordnung auch immer” (1994a: 32), as can the rabbits that return whenever humans give them a chance (7, 24). The block of flats itself, battered and worn, still radiates stability and calm, however chaotic the goings on inside and around it. The novel opens reassuringly: Es ist ein großes Haus, hundert Jahre alt. Der Stadtteil, in dem das Haus steht, hieß weiter Mitte, als er längst Rand war, dahinter Niemandsland, von der Schußwaffe wurde Gebrauch gemacht. (7)

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Furthermore, so the narrator suggests, chaos may itself carry meaning. The accession of the GDR to the old Federal Republic of Germany may seem to be presenting insuperable problems and hurdles, but might also offer new opportunities, scope for new ideas, and beneficial developments. The ceremonial as well as tongue-in-cheek declaration by Marianne’s friend Max, with which her eternal friendship with Norma is sealed, can easily be applied to the level of macro politics: Euer Bund fügt Ungleiche zusammen, zwei Unvollständigkeiten . . . und eben darin liegt seine Chance. Freundschaft ist nicht die schlechteste Art, mitzuwirken an der gesellschaftlichen Vereinigung, diesem Knäuel aus Hoffnungen, Mängeln und Mißverständnissen, von den Sachzwängen ganz zu schweigen. (283)

The light touch and almost playful, yet anything but superficial approach to her subject draws on the author’s faith, rooted in the spirit of enlightenment, in the ultimate victory of good over bad in a world of destruction and chaos. Having long lost her trust in “really existing socialism,” she retained respect for her fellow citizens’ need for ideals, hopes, utopias: Eben weil Träume, Ideale, Utopien im real existierenden Sozialismus nicht als Korrektive der Politik, sondern als Deformatoren der Realitätswahrnehmung und Realitätsdarstellung (mit schlimmen praktischen Folgen) gewirkt haben, besaßen sie eine durchaus paradoxe Funktion: Mit sozialistischen Idealen wurde genau das legitimiert oder beschönigt, was im Namen dieser Ideale ein für alle Male überwunden werden sollte — Unterdrückung, Ausbeutung, Unfreiheit. An eine mögliche andere gesellschaftliche Wirkungsweise von Träumen, Idealen, Utopien kann man sich jetzt nur suchend, im aufmerksamen Umgang mit neuen Erfahrungen herandenken, da läßt sich nichts “hinüberretten” — außer dem Bedürfnis nach derartigen Orientierungen. (1994b: 652)

As for herself, the failure of socialism in the GDR had certainly not made her throw overboard her own commitment to a more equal society. Indeed, immediately after unification she had expressed with some confidence her hope of being able to make a contribution towards changing the capitalist system that had replaced socialism: Wir müssen nicht, weil der Sozialismus gescheitert ist, den Kapitalismus, der heute Marktwirtschaft heißt, für unveränderbar halten und werden ja sehen, ob die Vielfalt verstreuter Initiativen, Basisbewegungen, alternativer Mikrostrukturen nicht doch ein Stück “Solidarraison” am Leben hält, auch als Korrektiv für ökonomische Sachzwänge und deren politische Handhabung. (Burmeister and Tetzner 1991: 59)

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Only, over the years her optimism was gradually replaced by “queasy resignation” (“flaue Resignation”) in the face of a total lack of any answers to the problems of the socially deprived (Braun 1997: 103).

Contrasts and Affinities The four texts discussed here represent attempts on the part of four authors (three former citizens of the GDR, one West German) to respond to the shock of the failure of socialist ideology, the dissolution of the GDR, and subsequent unification within the framework of a capitalist system. In two cases (Rehmann, Königsdorf) the response was relatively “unfiltered” and strongly autobiographical, while Maron and Burmeister maintained a greater degree of aloofness from their material. All four books project a mix of a sense of liberation and a sense of loss. The stronger and less critical the author’s ties with the doomed social system and its ideology had been, the deeper the lack of orientation and sense of loss of identity and “Heimat.” However, even Maron and Burmeister — the former full of loathing for the GDR and all it stood for, the latter having cultivated a degree of cool detachment from the socialist regime — each in their own way could not avoid feeling sadness and a need to mourn. Ruth Rehmann, who at the age of forty had thought she had found a home in the West German political left, was forced to ask herself in 1989/90 whether her faith in the feasibility of a “better socialism” had not been the result of self-delusion. In trying to throw light on “images” used by twentieth-century German society to conceal reality, she laid bare blocked perceptions in her own memory. On New Year’s Eve 1991, the first-person narrator is left isolated and lonely in a world without hope. Helga Königsdorf, a loyal member of the Socialist Unity Party to the end, portrays the demise of the GDR and the invasion of capitalism as synonymous with the collapse of her protagonist’s world. While perfectly willing to subject her ideological “Heimat” and her own role within it to harsh critical scrutiny, the narrator cannot but see the new social order as an endless stretch of here and now without any opening towards the future. Even the island off the coast of Africa has ceased to offer protection and hope. Monika Maron’s clean break with the GDR and its ideology in the 1980s and her subsequent relentless attacks on both meant that she could only present their defeat as a confirmation of her own position. Her triumph at finding herself on the side of the winner was, however, marred by a deep pain (hardly ever articulated) at being excluded from mourning the loss of a “Heimat” she had left behind. Her heroine’s nostalgia for the time in her life when “all ideals still seemed achievable”

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cannot be explained away purely by reference to irony, but also reflects a degree of emotional vulnerability to the loss of home and identity. Finally, Brigitte Burmeister found herself in the relatively exceptional position of being able to experience, observe, comment on, and give literary expression to the demise of the GDR and its socialist ideology without handicapping herself with disabling emotional baggage. The outcome was what critic Sibylle Cramer has intriguingly called “ein utopischer Roman . . . mithin ein störrisch unzeitgemäßer Roman, der unbeirrt das alte Erbe der Aufklärung und revolutionären Geschichtshoffnung in die Verhandlung der Zukunft hineinträgt” (1994: L9). While freely acknowledging the fatal results of the abuse of socialist dreams, ideals, and utopias in the GDR, Burmeister continues to insist on the in-principle legitimacy of some cautious utopian dimension of human world experience. And that may well be the most any of these four women authors would wish to claim. Grand social utopias of the kind envisaged in the late 1920s by Karl Mannheim and from the late 1930s by Ernst Bloch in 3 Das Prinzip Hoffnung are unlikely to capture Western imagination for some time to come.

Notes 1

Antonia Grunenberg refers to this phenomenon in works by East German writers generally as “blockierte Wahrnehmung” (1990: 21). 2 We are faced with a similar emotional drought with respect to the death (or murder?) of the narrator’s beloved in Monika Maron’s Animal triste. 3

Bloch’s Das Prinzip Hoffnung was written between 1938 and 1947 in the US, and then revised between 1953 and publication in 1959.

Works Cited Bloch, Ernst. Das Prinzip Hoffnung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1959. Braun, Volker. Langsamer knirschender Morgen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987. ———. “Ein Ort für Peter Weiss: ‘Es gibt unendlich viel Hoffnung, aber nicht für uns,’ sagt Kafka, nein, es gibt wenig Hoffnung, aber für uns.” Neue deutsche Literatur 2 (1998): 171–80. Burmeister, Brigitte. Anders oder Vom Aufenthalt in der Fremde. Berlin: Verlag der Nation, 1987. ———. “Erzählen als Sujet.” Neue deutsche Literatur 1 (1999): 90–106. ———. “Schriftsteller in gewendeten Verhältnissen.” Sinn und Form 7 (1994b): 648–54.

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———. Unter dem Namen Norma. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1994a. Burmeister, Brigitte, and Gerti Tetzner. “Keine Macht, aber Spielraum.” In Gute Nacht, du Schöne. Autorinnen blicken zurück, ed. Anna Mudry. Frankfurt am Main: Luchterhand, 1991, 30–59. Cramer, Sibylle. “Deutsche Zustände und die offenen Felder im Gefüge der Gegenwart.” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 5 October 1994: L9. Gaus, Günther. “Helga Königsdorf im Gespräch mit Günther Gaus.” Neue deutsche Literatur 5 (1992): 78–92. Grunenberg, Antonia. “Das Ende der Macht ist der Anfang der Literatur. Zum Streit um die SchriftstellerInnen in der DDR.” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte B44 (1990) 17–26. Heukenkamp, Ursula. “Metapher der Befreiung. Volker Braun, ‘Das innerste Afrika.’” In DDR-Literatur ‘87 im Gespräch, ed. Siegfried Rönisch. Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau, 1988, 184–96. ———. “Von Utopie nach Afrika. Utopisches Denken in der Krise der Utopien.” In Literatur in der DDR. Rückblicke, ed. Heinz-Ludwig Arnold and Frauke Meyer-Gosau. Munich: edition text + kritik, 1991, 184–93. Königsdorf, Helga. Gleich neben Afrika. Berlin: Rowohlt, 1992. Krumbholz, Martin. “Gott Franz.” Die Zeit (15 March 1996): 53. Mannheim, Karl. Ideologie und Utopie. 2nd ed. Bonn: Friedrich Cohen, 1930. Maron, Monika. Animal triste. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1996. ———. Flugasche. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1981. ———. “Ich war ein antifaschistisches Kind.” In “Die Geschichte ist offen.” DDR 1990: Hoffnung auf eine neue Republik. Schriftsteller aus der DDR über die Zukunftschancen ihres Landes, ed. Michael Naumann. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1990, 117–35. ———. Pawels Briefe. Eine Familiengeschichte. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1999. Naumann, Michael, ed. “Die Geschichte ist offen.” DDR 1990: Hoffnung auf eine neue Republik. Schriftsteller aus der DDR über die Zukunftschancen ihres Landes. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1990. Rehmann, Ruth. Unterwegs in fremden Träumen. Begegnungen mit dem andern Deutschland. Munich: Carl Hanser, 1993. Shaw, Gisela. “‘Keine Chance, mich auf Distanz zu halten’: Ruth Rehmann, the Reluctant Autobiographer.” In Autobiography by Women in German, ed. Mererid Puw Davies, Beth Linklater, and Gisela Shaw. Oxford, Bern: Peter Lang, 2000a, 213–27. ———. “‘Keine Macht, aber Spielraum’ oder ‘das Ende einer Sprachlosigkeit’: Brigitte Burmeisters Roman Unter dem Namen Norma.” In 1949/1989. Cultural Perspectives on Division and Unity in East and West, ed. Clare Flanagan and Stuart Taberner. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000b, 199–213.

A Worm’s Eye View and a Bird’s Eye View: Culture and Politics in Berlin since 1989 Ulrike Zitzlsperger

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of transition, Berlin, with its new skylines, now faces the challenges of its long-desired role as a metropolis. A period in which lack of normality was turned into an art form may be coming to an end. Simultaneously, the debate on the future of large cities in general makes it obvious that there is currently more at stake than one 2 particular city. While increasingly open to new definitions and interpretations, cities still offer possibilities of liberation in a wide variety of forms (see Diederichsen 1999: 22). But in contrast to London, Paris, or Los 3 Angeles, Berlin — together with Hong Kong — has the advantage that it is redefining itself out of political and historical necessity. An advertisement for the Expo 2000 close to the Brandenburg Gate was appropriate in more than one respect: in this historic setting, it proclaimed in four languages “You are now leaving the present.” It therefore came as a surprise that the 2001 exhibition Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis in the Tate Modern in London did not include Berlin. One reason for this can be found in the catalogue. Each city chosen, it says, “can be regarded as being both culturally distinct and emblematic of wider global tendencies” (Blazwick 2001: 13). Berlin, one could argue, is an exceptional case; indeed, that is something on which it has capitalized for a long time. Of course, it would also be justified to argue that after ten years in which attention had focused on Berlin it was about time to consider alternatives. What most big cities have in common is that in recent years der öffentliche Raum (public space) has been rediscovered — it is not just a matter of politicians and architects trying to fill squares and streets to demonstrate urban vitality. These spaces have also been claimed by diverse groups, all presenting their own views and attractions. A good example is the skateboarders who in 2000 took over Berlin during the so-called “Blade nights.” The people involved share a common desire to 4 demonstrate their special interest to the public. Ability or the lack of it FTER A DECADE

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is of no importance, and those responsible for the future of the city were more than pleased about this development since urban character was the central demand of the 1990s — the livelier the better, the less artificial the more promising. In the meantime, there has been no less of an advance in the cultural field. Apart from a fight for survival in a city of mirror-images and after years of politically motivated subsidies, culture as an end in itself was 5 outlived. During the 1990s the vacuum of a post-ideological era had to be filled. Literature, theater and the visual arts came in on the search for answers, identities, and new ideals. This revival, as well as the birth of new forms and developments, might have happened anyway to some extent — but certainly not as fast and with so much creativeness. For example, the demand for a “Großstadtroman,” a novel dealing with the metropolis itself, is clearly related to these recent developments. The real political and cultural challenge turned out to be that of an “Übergangszeit” — the transitional period between past and future, “no longer” and “not yet” — a period of open identities. There were no specific target groups: everybody was affected by the process of repairing and recovery, by the (re)birth of the New Berlin. The “old,” dating back only to the pre-1989 period, had turned into something historic and inadequate; hence the boom in Berlin myths at the time and the attempt to create the new myth of a superimposed present appropriate to the metropolis of the twenty-first century. The situation was helped — if not remedied — by interaction among politics, business, and the arts, each of which in varying degrees benefited from the others while shaping the “roaring 1990s” and incidentally broadening the concept of culture. It seems a good time to trace some of the cultural trends of the “Übergangszeit” perceptible in the 1990s. Political decisions, both right and wrong, began to be re-evaluated in November 1999, the tenth anniversary of the fall of the Wall; and the cultural scene appears to have calmed down after years of competitive hype. Within this period, both culture and politics faced up to similar problems — one of the most difficult being the question of “Vergangenheitsbewältigung,” coming to terms with the German past. Perhaps the difference between politics and culture in respect of their impact on Berlin is best epitomized in this context by the new Reichstag. Politics and city management benefit from having a place to be identified with. The eye of the Reichstag’s dome offers a point of general reference, which cultural activities, concerned with recapturing the city in its particularities, lack. I shall explore these phenomena in relation to a number of examples, looking first at politics and its use of culture, then at literary adaptations

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of the changes within the city, then at the use of public space made by culture, and finally at specific symptoms marking the end of Berlin’s transitional period and its distinctive cultural experiments and manifestations.

Politics and Business: Stage-Managing Culture Faced with numerous building projects in the heart of the city, the Berlin Senate, the public relations company “Partner für Berlin” and some of the major investors took advantage of the opportunity afforded by massive change. The whole building process — which goes far beyond the symbolic significance of Potsdamer Platz in the so-called heart of the city — was turned into something remarkable, appealing to more than simply architects or town planners. Playing on the word “Baustelle,” the 6 “Schaustelle” was born: literally a place to look at. The link between the location and an event — whether as a guided thematic tour, a reading, the ballet of cranes, or a particular exhibition — proved very attractive. Having been on the periphery for so long, the city center was quickly accepted by a majority who were made to feel in the know. The period of transition turned into something exciting. Carefully stage-managed presentation of excavations was linked to history, special events, memorable nights, and lists of superlatives (such as: biggest building site in Europe), and, in the end, nurtured eager anticipation of new parts of the city. “Schauen” and “dabei sein” became a key topic — a consciousness of participating in developments by observing them. The strategy paid off. While tourists found something to replace the thrill of the Wall, 7 Berliners were guided into the future of Metropolis. The 1997 slogan, “Das Neue Berlin entdecken — weiter geht’s” was succeeded the following year by the “Kultursommer 1998.” Images that previously had been no more than vague visions were turning into tangible reality. In 2000 the Schaustelle faced a problem — too many of the building sites that had attracted interest throughout the city were finished by then and had taken on a new separate character. Weekend trips to Potsdamer Platz combining shopping and culture are a sad substitute for years of “Architainment.” The attractions were therefore parceled together: “Sommer in Berlin” and “EXPO 2000 in Berlin,” “Berlin: offene Stadt” and “Kultursommer 2000.” In this context, from the second half of the 1990s on culture has been productively used to open up the city. It has helped to make developments apparent and has itself actually gained from the process: as the various experiences were made accessible to a broader public, cultural events became increasingly popular. Events now characterize not only

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what is thought of as the building culture, but also other activities too. When the “Literaturexpress Europa 2000” came to its final stop in Berlin in July of the same year, literature read aloud at Friedrichstraße station no longer came as a surprise. As a consequence, when the “Berlinale der Literatur” took place in June 2001, it could fall back on something familiar. Eighty authors from all over the world took part in a ten-day literary marathon, making use of locations all over the city: universities, theaters, libraries, “Literaturhäuser,” and cultural institutions. Stage-managed culture, generously funded as it is, very easily becomes a talking-point. Advertising was quick to adopt the keywords. In 1997 the Wasserstadt GmbH ran the advertisement “Mit 12,65 km neuen Ufern die längste Schaustelle,” while the electricity company Bewag used a pun, 8 “Schalt-Stelle Berlin.” In this way the advertisers capitalized on the way the appeal of Architainment and “Infotainment” was directed not exclusively at specific groups but inclusively, at society as a whole. For roughly five years everything had seemed possible; exciting visions and a thrilling sense of big-city vitality were expressed in countless events. Within the city certain places became stages for ideas. In the reality of the transformed city center, however, the blend no longer works so well. Once Potsdamer Platz was opened to the public in 1998, the visions and the open future of a “gigantische Benutzeroberfläche” 9 (Rada 1997: 10) suddenly belonged to a recent past. All that remains is events at more or less unorthodox places — for example Volker Braun and Ben Okri, Kazuko Shiaishi and Patricia Smith reciting poetry at 10 Potsdamer Platz from 7:30 P.M. until after midnight. The civic forum with its public courtyard next to the new Chancellery, envisaged by the architects as representing the openness and accessibility of modern Germany, was never built. Rather, the various nicknames given to the building may suggest that together with public spaces there is an increase of interest in symbolic resonance: the Chancellor’s home is called “Palast am Tiergarten” or “Kanzlerpalast,” the company Berlin Tourism Marketing has suggested “Capital Palace,” and only the author Lutz Rathenow has added ironic humor to the debate with his allusive suggestion, “Palast der Republik” (see Kurtz 2001). Nearby, an art project on display in one of the courtyards (“Lichthöfe”) of the Reichstag led to far more practical popular involvement. One of the most debated “happenings” of recent years, it combines a long-term 11 event, political messages, entertainment, and accessibility. In April 2000 members of Parliament agreed by a slender majority of 260 to 258 on the installation by the artist Hans Haacke of a wooden trough intended 12 to be filled with earth and bearing the dedication “to the people.” By

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the end of the year, some two hundred members of Parliament had delivered earth to it from their constituencies. The seeds have been left 13 to their own devices. The process amounts to the most complete illustration of the interface of art and politics, of client, artist, and public, of the city and the significance of public space, of event and message.

Cultural Adaptation Versus Masterminded City Images During the 1990s various cultural events helped to bring a unified Berlin back to life and challenged decrepit institutions to think about new concepts. Just one example is “die lange Nacht der Museen,” when the city’s museums cooperate for one night in staying open to the general public. On 29 January 2001, Christine-Felice Röhrs in the Tagesspiegel was able to report on the success of this concept, which seems to stress the importance of quantity, under the headline “Swingen unterm Saurier”: Die Berliner sind ein hartgesottenes Völkchen. Zu Zehntausenden ließen sie sich Sonnabend Nacht selbst vom Regen und Kälte nicht davon abhalten, durch die Dunkelheit zu reisen. Schließlich waren zur 9. Langen Nacht der Museen 70 Sammlungen, Ausstellungen und Kulturprojekte bis 2 Uhr morgens geöffnet.

Urban space as defined by public relations is linked to new, post-1989 images. The desired laboratory-like effect depends on the unusual, the things one must see and take part in. The city had been quick to learn from the positive effect of Christo’s Wrapping of the Reichstag in 1995 (see Christo and Jeanne-Claude 1995). The lessons to be learned were: first, culture is able to change perceptions — even in relation to a building on the scale of the Reichstag; and, second, mass events with public appeal are not necessarily a bad thing. The so-called New Berlin worked hard to achieve the dynamic 14 new objectives assigned to it. But this culture of images is a far cry from the numerous real identities of the city. Here, literature in particular adopts a quite different procedure. Literature inevitably works on a slow time-fuse. While the question of “Vergangenheitsbewältigung” and relations between East and West were dealt with quite early on, enthusiasm for the metropolis has remained restrained — despite the search for a new novel able to deal with the topic as powerfully as Döblin did in the 1920s. The numerous fictional men-about-town inhabiting Berlin in the 1990s have added their critical comments, while anthologies brought together approaches from

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East and West — written by journalists, promising newcomers, and well-established (usually East German) authors. Crime novels happily dealt with highlights such as the move of the capital from Bonn to Berlin, land speculation or political power-games (e.g., Schweitzer 1997). Thanks to the author Thomas Brussig, daily life in the GDR became so presentable that in December 1999 the SPD invited him for a reading and discussion with Wolfgang Thierse in the Willy-Brandt-Haus. It was the author, not the politician, who was able to declare that the GDR was “zur Verklärung freigegeben,” ready for the official sale and “transfiguration” of its memories, in particular the happy ones. But what about the New Berlin, metropolis and capital? In 1999, Peter Schneider published Eduards Heimkehr. The protagonist, who left Berlin just before the fall of the Wall, has had to make do with following events on television in California. What takes him back to Germany in the mid-1990s is the burdensome inheritance of a block of flats in east Berlin. This is new territory for the ex-West Berliner anyway. The former student, who belonged to the 1968 generation, is faced with today’s young occupants claiming the place for themselves. While the police recommend that Eduard talk to his “tenants,” he finds out that the young rebels are all from the West (36). Moreover, the western part of the city has changed dramatically too. Alongside a few old reference15 points offering a sense of security, the urban landscape of the center has become a metaphor of manipulation. Public relations events that Eduard takes part in prove the pretentiousness of the way in which the city is being reshaped (159). For him, the contemporary desert is “das offene Herz der Stadt” (273); the Reichstag is a mere skeleton, the city’s body being torn apart to be operated on. Contrary to the intentions of the city management, the landscape and the rebuilding remain two different things. Instead of a synthesizing “Schaustelle,” history confronts the present; whatever the outcome of the operation, the result is a body that 16 has been manipulated. The author Peter Wawerzinek, one of the former angry young men of the Prenzlauer Berg, also presents his protagonists as people shaped by the period before 1989. In Café Komplott. Eine glückliche Begebenheit of 1998, he describes four former citizens of the GDR, still caught up in their individual past, who decide to rob a bank at Potsdamer Platz. Thanks to their intervention the festive opening of the Reichstag loses all its importance. Instead of politicians and architects holding center stage, it is Heinrich’s suicide, committed by jumping from the roof of the hotel Adlon, that gets the public’s attention. The Adlon, in contrast to Potsdamer Platz, has been rebuilt from scratch in a neohistorical

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manner. Like the others, Heinrich resents the new city center for its ignorant, future-bound sensationalism. For him, political, architectural and economic superlatives gloss over the reality of the location: Er nennt das Baugeschehen einen böswilligen Akt, den Versuch, in die Wunde hinein das Wunder der künstlichen Metropole zu stampfen, zu Stahl und Glas geklotzte Megalomonie. . . . Am Potsdamer Platz sei die Mauer zurückgekehrt. (46)

But although the robbery succeeds — and with it the intended distraction of the media — it is obvious that, where the future dominates as much as it does at Potsdamer Platz, acts of personal commitment such as Heinrich’s “heroism” are to no avail and, at best, make the contrasts more obvious. To a certain extent literature acknowledges the same locations as the institutions of power. But Schneider’s and Wawerzinek’s protagonists’ perception of Berlin is shaped by their past, not by new beginnings. Apart from its metaphorical qualities, the official New Berlin is not necessarily interesting. At most it offers a background, a point of reflection — 17 whether it be for a reappraisal of an Eastern or Western biography, or for analysis of the city’s wounds, a recurrent phenomenon since the Second World War. It is the shiny and new, the events and images revealing discontinuities, that make room for identities and are the central challenge for a literature deprived of clear (usually ideologically deter18 mined) positions by the loss of the Wall. The protagonist of Friedrich Christian Delius’s Die Flatterzunge (1999), desperately walking through Berlin searching for an answer to his problem, discovers similar impressions: Nun wird das nächste, das gläserne Jahrhundert hochgezogen. Noch ist alles unfertig, roh und im Werden, Hochbau und Tiefbau im Wettstreit. Bald ist die Welt perfekt: interaktiv, informativ, innovativ. Nie wieder, dachte ich, wird es hier so schön sein wie jetzt, wie heute, in diesen Minuten, so unfertig, vielfältig, wild, wund, lebendig, knospend 19 und sprießend wie Frühling. (53)

The fact remains that after 1989 Potsdamer Platz, however often it is used as a metaphor in literature, has actually been created by public relations exercises which turned chaos into a spectacle to convey what literature now has to judge from a distance: the building of bridges between East and West, the healing of wounds in the ravaged city. Since the square was handed over for international competition in the early 1990s, the creative element of “chance” has disappeared. Its literary manifestations are therefore preshaped between more or less ironic re-

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fusal and acceptance. Investors and politicians aim at completion; literature is inspired by the potential of the unfinished.

New Culture Conquering Public Space Berlin has a long tradition of fringe groups, and for them too the year 1989 was a turning-point. Art and culture quickly learned to claim special locations, mainly “im Wilden Osten.” For example, in 1990 “Pfefferwerk” was launched as an initiative combining social, cultural, and economic projects. In keeping with the trend of the time, a nineteenth-century brewery in the Prenzlauer Berg district was chosen for its activities. “Tacheles” in Mitte was set up the same year in the ruin of the Friedrichstadtpassage, which dates from 1907. This self-administered “Gesamtkunstwerk” (Siebenhaar 1998: 293) has recently achieved the unthinkable: the owners of the building are securing the future of the enterprise for another ten years by charging only a token rent of, at the time, one Mark per annum. Although this decision is unusual, investment groups have clearly learned to react far more sensitively to the islands of alternative culture within the city — as long as they pay off, stand for something interesting, and are prepared to cooperate with the investors. Special locations still retain their importance for culture at the beginning of the twenty-first century. To name just a few examples: in 2000 Salon Stadt by StadtKunstProjekte used the district Köpenick in the southeast of Berlin for the presentation of art, while Z 2000, organized by the Akademie der Künste, presented three hundred international artists in five different locations in various parts of the city. For the exhibition Stadt der Architektur/Architektur der Stadt: Berlin 1900–2000 the derelict Neues Museum in Mitte was chosen, plans and visions being contrasted there with past glories. But while numerous new locations were adopted, others lost out — for example, the Tempodrom, founded in 1980 in the Tiergarten. Now too close to the government and its new buildings, this cultural circus had no choice but to start searching for a new home, helped by a public-private partnership. Currently called Temporär, it is now settling into a new building at the Anhalter Bahnhof, another landmark Second World War ruin in the center. In the process, the once uncomplicated notion “umsonst und draußen” changed too, reflecting trends but not necessarily needs. In the future, instead of informal summer events, spectacular culture will be on offer the whole year round. Some events, however, adopt public space to aim for what is conceived as the ultimate experience. Streets and squares become a stage; a shedding of collective self-consciousness allows a new sense of commu-

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nity, public space becoming a correlative of existence itself. In 1989, when the Love-Parade started as an underground movement, there were only 150 Techno fans following a truck along the Kurfürstendamm. In 2000, according to the organizers, up to 1.5 million people took part under the motto “One World — One Love-Parade” (there is always an annually changing simplistic slogan), following the beat of fifty-three 20 trucks with sound systems and celebrating a fast-track youth culture. The route followed is part of the attraction. The focal point is the Victory Column in the Tiergarten, while the parade moves in from the Brandenburg Gate and the Ernst Reuter Platz. Always an area where major events took place, the roads eventually fell into the hands of pedestrians who took them over in the momentous developments of November 1989. While politicians and even hospitals join the Love Parade for the sake of publicity, some feel that the scale of the event no longer has anything to do with the original idea and have instead adopted a grass-roots parade opposed to Berlin as a capital and its high rents as well as to what is now the established institution of the Love-Parade. By 2001 the strain on the Love-Parade was obvious. It was criticized by some as commercialized and superficial, while others were concerned about the impact of the masses on the Tiergarten. The consequence was a number of political demonstrations at weekends throughout the summer and along the same route — therefore blocking the Love-Parade. This example of democracy in action, together with the inflexibility of the organizers of the Love-Parade regarding financial arrangements, the parade’s status, and its timing, nearly led to its demise. Only the concern of local government at the prospect of losing one of its most magnetic events finally saved the parade, which is increasingly presenting a socalled retro-look, the spirit of a new and independent culture gone, the lack of a message taking its toll. In its thirteenth year the Parade officially lost its status as a political demonstration. In the 1990s Berlin had been the obvious choice for a new international edition of Woodstock, the field replaced by streets, the old drugs by speed, exclusiveness by something all-embracing. The thrill of Berlin as a location having worn out, the Techno-party moves on — for example to Leeds, Vienna, and Tel Aviv, in years to come to Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City. These cities sent their representatives to Berlin in 2000 precisely to learn how to organize an event that was once marked by its spontaneity and was considered a trademark of a rejuvenated post-Wall Berlin.

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Arcs and Refractions Twice in the twentieth century Berlin has invested in official illumination of the city: the first time in the 1920s when light actually had a certain novelty value, then again in the 1950s, when it contributed to the ideological contours of the city (Pook-Feller 2000). After a decade of cultural experiment the idea of Berlin’s transitional state, with the many quotations playing on its image as being constantly 21 in flux, is wearing thin. A political awareness attuned to a new Germany is settling in, the culture of the city has been redefined. At the same time the cityscape now offers new illuminated points of reference: instead of the former East German Television Tower, the Western Funkturm, or the Mercedes Benz Star forever circling over the Breitscheidplatz, the city is shaped by new highlights. The golden roof of the rebuilt Synagogue was already promising in the early 1990s; now the cupola of the Reichstag also stands out in the night. Sony’s circus roof at Potsdamer Platz is another nightly spectacle. As with most of the new buildings, opportunities to access all these high points are taken up by visitors and inhabitants alike. The view from the roof of the Reichstag, the Infobox (which, true to its original intention as a temporary building, was torn down in 2000/2001), or the Leibnitz-Kolonnaden have become integral to understanding the city. Light emphasizes old and new features. In 2000, illumination of the Französischer Dom on Gendarmenmarkt combined with music to bring out the beauty of the building (“Ex-Animo”). In 1998 the artist Reinhard Stangl developed light ribbons in the Oranienburgerstraße and Krausnickstraße as a means of integrating a building in its surroundings. On Potsdamer Platz, illuminated cranes by Gerhard Merz were among the most noteworthy installations during the years of rebuilding. The rebuilding of the Breitscheidplatz with its landmark, the Kaiser-WilhelmGedächtniskirche, will include large-scale illumination. However, the debate caused by the spectacular “light-show” around the Victory Column for the millennium celebrations revealed that neither art nor politics is entirely able to sever its ties from the German past; too many people felt reminded of Albert Speer’s “light-rallies” for the National Socialists. The show looked too similar for comfort. The threshold created by the year 1989 and the new culture of events and experience do, after all, have their historical limitations. Light is used on a large scale to mark changes. For example, fireworks are used at the beginning and end of festivals or to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Illuminations, whether fireworks or other forms of light,

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signify special times, now and then even a rite of passage. The use of light on numerous occasions in Berlin toward the end of the millennium was not only a remarkable example of artistic experiment informed by political, architectural, or economic significance, it also marked the end of a certain rhetoric — new symbols take over; art itself might again become playful instead of functional.

Flesh and Stone

22

Between June and October 2000 in the former Postbahnhof at Berlin’s newly renovated Ostbahnhof, the exhibition z.B. Berlin. 10 Jahre Transformation und Modernisierung took stock of progress so far. According to its organizers, the Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung, the capital 23 had developed from a blueprint agreed on paper into hard reality. The first floor of the exhibition was devoted to cubes by various artists who, apart from this unifying format, were free to develop their ideas. The second floor dealt with the various projects of the 1990s. Although the individual topics were of limited interest for the layman, the whole structure of the presentation in the form of a walk along a railway line towards a café with an open vista at the far end was an experience in itself — reducing the first floor to a mere bridge and on the second floor giving more attention to the presentation itself than to what was presented. Explanation of the factual developments and the building work of the past ten years is now couched in the language of tradition: “New Berlin is a modern interpretation of the European city. A renaissance, indeed” (Stimmann 2000: 137). The interplay of politics and culture with which I have been concerned in this essay turned out to be highly fruitful. While politics needed the blending with culture to transform the city into acceptable urban space and to set new norms, culture had to redefine itself in consequence of the new political landscape. Some trendsetters ignored traditional institutional settings and simply took over suitable open spaces. When the various approaches worked together, there was a marked sense of a new threshold of anticipation and discovery. After the bridging of the gap between past and future, by the end of the 1990s what mattered was no longer the city as a whole but increasingly the mood and distinctive ambience of one’s own environment and way of living. Indications of a change in culture include, for example, the retreat to one’s local district, the Kiez, the number of clubs closing down as a result of the loss of spectacular locations, and a general loss of interest in yet another “special event.”

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Berlin in the 1990s generated a wide variety of texts on the subject of the city. City politics relied on a visually orientated image culture aiming at rapid identification and trying to provide new overviews — a politically driven bird’s eye view of the capital. The Schaustelle offered the decisive keyword: “Schauen,” looking on — a process that by its very nature is bound to be limited by circumstances, changing as they change. By contrast, the literary examples I have discussed resist the claims of a new beginning, consciously looking away, and thereby able to highlight individuals within the continuity of time.

Notes 1

“Die Kennzeichnung des neuen Berlin, seiner zukünftigen Rolle steht noch aus. Sie erfaßt alle Ebenen zugleich” (Süß and Rytlewski 1999: 12). For a more detailed discussion, see Hartung (1999a and 1999b) and Krüger (1998). 2

More recent publications on this topic with reference to Berlin are Mönninger (1999), Keller (2000), and Bollmann (1999). See also “Urban 21. Die Stadt im Diskurs der Städte: Foyer,” Journal für Stadtentwicklung, June 2000. 3

The topic was addressed in the exhibition “HongKong — Berlin. Festival of Vision,” held in the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin August/September 2000. 4

“Hierbei handelt es sich um ein Erleben des Erlebens — beispielsweise eines Erlebens gleichgesinnter oder gleichzeitig anwesender Anderer. Der Anonymität der individuellen Lebensführung, wie sie gerade in den Großstädten zu einem Problem geworden ist, wird die gemeinsame Anwesenheit in einer Straßensituation entgegengesetzt. [. . .] Zentraler Bestandteil dieser neuen Festkultur ist die Inszenierung und Ermöglichung eines kollektiven Gemeinschaftserlebens” (Bette 1999: 108 and 110). 5 “Tatsächlich war Kulturpolitik in Berlin vor dem Mauerfall ein diffuses, wild gewachsenes und unberechenbares Feld, das dem Image einer zerklüfteten Mauerstadt entsprach. Hier konnte sich in den Bezirken eine dezentrale Kultur als Ergebnis der Studentenbewegung entwickeln, die eher die Interessen vor Ort vertrat, als der Repräsentation des offiziellen Berlin zuzuarbeiten” (Fricke 2000). 6

The Schaustelle was founded in 1996 in cooperation with Partner für Berlin, two departments of the Senate and private investors. It presents a new type of public-private partnership and currently takes place every year from June to the end of August. 7

“Die gewöhnlich ungeliebten Orte sind zu Hoffnungsträgern avanciert, zu Herolden, die von der großen Zukunft der Stadt künden. ‘Jede Baustelle ist ein Hoffnungsträger’ wurde bald zu einer Standardfloskel von Politikern bei Richtfest-Reden” (Sontheimer 1999: 130). 8 See Schaustelle Berlin: Das neue Berlin entdecken (Berlin, 1997), 29 and 71. Those less impressed by glossy promises of the future were no less quick to react — a familiar process in Berlin. The environmental group BUND promptly advertised the “Schaustelle von unten,” a “grassroots Schaustelle” promising to show what others kept quiet. See Schaustelle Berlin: Das neue Berlin entdecken (Berlin, 1997), 31.

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For critical press reviews of the Schaustelle in recent years, see, for example: “Hurra, alles Kultur,” in die tageszeitung (18 July 1999), and “Regisseure inszenieren die Stadt,” die tageszeitung (28 July 1999), or “Berlin hat fertig,” die tageszeitung (11 July 1999). 9

DaimlerBenz opened its part in 1998; Sony followed in 2000.

10

See the leaflet “Literatur kommt an,” July 2000, 19.

11

Up-to-date photos may be found on the Internet at http://www.bundestag.de/ bau_kunst/kunstwerke/haacke/derbevoelkerung/. 12

The artist’s dedication “Der Bevölkerung” instead of “Dem Deutschen Volke” led to a long debate. Associations with National Socialist “Blut und Boden” ideology have meanwhile proven to be unfounded: the delivery of earth has turned into an excellent tool against racism. 13

This is currently a popular approach. As part of a project funded by DAAD Berlin, for example, the Brazilian artist Maria Thereza Alves took samples from some Berlin building sites. One part of the experiment involved the observation of what grew out of the samples, the other part was research into the botanical background of historic sites. 14

After years of advancing the New Berlin, Partner für Berlin decided in 1999 to focus on the city’s strengths as a model, the keywords being: “Ost-West-Metropole,” “Hauptstadt,” “Kreative Stadt,” “Junge Stadt,” and “Lebenswerte Stadt.” 15

Some of these reference points, such as the local pub, had been crucial in the first novel of Schneider’s trilogy, Der Mauerspringer (1982). 16

An image that can similarily be found in Cees Nooteboom’s novel Allerseelen of 1999. 17 On the challenge of dealing with one’s own past in the light of the completely new, see Cailloux (1991) or Morshäuser (1998). With reference to the east, see for instance de Bruyn (1998). A recent film adaptation on the topic is Die Unberührbare by Oskar Roehler, about the writer Hanna Flanders (1999). 18

The effect of change is observed by Christian Jäger: “Als Zwischenresultat nach dem Gang durch fünf Romane läßt sich festhalten, daß es in allen Romanen zentral um die Entwicklung von Individualität oder Identität in feindlicher Gesellschaft geht” (1999: 24). 19

When he briefly considers committing suicide he feels that the Infobox — the one temporary building on the place — might be an appropriate place (Delius 1999: 133).

20

Organized by Planetcom GmbH, a company supported by a number of groups marketing Berlin. 21 “Die unaufhörliche Selbstzerstörung Berlins, das sich alle dreißig Jahre neu entwarf, kam natürlich aus seiner Jugendlichkeit. [. . .] Berlin mußte sich ja tatsächlich immer wieder neu entwerfen, wo doch Paris und London stets dieselben bleiben” (Siedler 1998: 109, see also 68). Siedler discusses the quotations referring to Berlin’s frequent (and complete) changes. This topic is also referred to in literature, for instance Peter Schneider’s Eduards Heimkehr: “Eduard solle Alfred Döblin lesen, Joseph Roth, Theodor Fontane, Heinrich Heine — all diese Zeugen hätten berich-

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tet, daß Berlin zu ihrer Zeit gerade umgebaut werde. Die Stadt sei seit Jahrhunderten im Umbau, aber offenbar werde sie nie fertig” (1999: 280). 22

This phrase is drawn from Richard Sennett’s book Fleisch und Stein. Der Körper und die Stadt in der westlichen Zivilisation (1997). 23

1990/2000. z.B. Berlin. Zehn Jahre Transformation und Modernisierung. Begleitheft zur Ausstellung der Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung, 2.

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Krüger, Thomas. Die bewegte Stadt. Berlin am Ende der Neunziger. Berlin: Bostelmann und Sieben, 1998. Kurtz, Andreas. “Palast am Tiergarten.” Berliner Zeitung (8 May 2001). Mönninger, Michael, ed. Stadtgesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999. Morshäuser, Bodo. Liebeserklärung an eine häßliche Stadt. Berliner Gefühle. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1998. Nooteboom, Cees. Allerseelen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999. Pook-Feller, Ulrike. “Lichtkampagnen als Mittel städtischer Selbstdarstellung.” In Schönes gefährliches Licht. Studien zu einem kulturellen Phänomen, ed. Karin Hirdina and Falk Strehlow. Stuttgart: ibidem, 2000, 203–27. Rada, Uwe. Hauptstadt der Verdrängung. Berliner Zukunft zwischen Kiez und Metropole. Hamburg: Libertäre Assoziation, 1997. Röhrs, Christine-Felice. “Lange Nacht der Museen: Swingen unterm Saurier.” Der Tagesspiegel (29 January 2001). Schneider, Peter. Eduards Heimkehr. Berlin: Rowohlt, 1999. ———. Der Mauerspringer. Darmstadt and Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1982. Schweitzer, Eva. Hauptstadt-Roulette. Berlin: Argon, 1997. Sennett, Richard. Fleisch und Stein. Der Körper und die Stadt in der westlichen Zivilisation. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997. Siebenhaar, Klaus, ed. Kulturhandbuch Berlin. Geschichte & Gegenwart von A–Z. Berlin: Bostelmann und Sieben, 1998. Siedler, Wolf Jobst. Phoenix im Sand. Glanz und Elend der Hauptstadt. Berlin: Propyläen, 1998. Sontheimer, Michael. Berlin, Berlin. Der Umzug in die Hauptstadt. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1999. Stimmann, Hans. “Die Textur der Stadt.” In z.B. Berlin. Zehn Jahre Transformation und Modernisierung. Begleitbuch zur Ausstellung. Berlin: Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung, 2000, 120–37. Süß, Werner, and Ralf Rytlewski. “Einführung.” In Berlin. Die Hauptstadt. Vergangenheit und Zukunft einer europäischen Metropole, ed. Werner Süß and Ralf Rytlewski. Nicolaische: Berlin. 1999, 9–13. Wawerzinek, Peter. Café Komplott. Eine glückliche Begebenheit. Berlin: Transit Verlag, 1998.

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conference on the Holocaust held in Stockholm in January 2000, Gerhard Schröder asserted: “Einen Schlußstrich unter die deutsche Geschichte kann niemand ziehen, und die 1 überwältigende Mehrheit der Deutschen will das auch nicht.” Even if the German population wanted to forget it would not be able to. It is a fact as obvious as it is paradoxical that at the beginning of the twentyfirst century the Holocaust has become less of an event in history than one in current affairs. Take the first six months of the year 2000 alone when Germany witnessed the “symbolic” start of construction of the Holocaust monument in Berlin on the annual day of commemoration to the victims of National Socialism, reports on the resurgence of far right violence and a neo-Nazi march through the Brandenburg Gate, and false claims that secret donations to the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) came from Holocaust survivors living in Switzerland. President Johannes Rau apologized for German atrocities towards the Jews during the Sec2 ond World War in a speech at the Knesset in Jerusalem, while legal wranglings over compensation payments to former forced laborers continued to dominate the political agenda. The award of the KonradAdenauer prize to the controversial historian Ernst Nolte and the ensuing Feuilleton debate seemed to have taken Germany back full circle to the Historikerstreit of the 1980s and certainly proved, to use Nolte’s 3 terms, that this is a “Vergangenheit, die nicht vergehen will.” Since then, the so-called “Leitkultur” and “Nationalstolz” debates have questioned what it means to be German and whether one dare speak of German national pride after decades in which patriotism was allowed to 4 stretch to the constitution but no further. The publication of the German version of Norman Finkelstein’s controversial book The Holocaust T THE INTERNATIONAL

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Industry triggered a debate that had less to do with the content of the 5 book than with Germany’s relations to the National Socialist past. However, the legacy of National Socialism — or rather the Holo6 caust — now spreads way beyond Germany. “Auschwitz” has become a global paradigm for evil which both fascinates and repels in its refusal to fall within the parameters of rational explanation. Whilst Vergangen7 heitsbewältigung was once a purely German phenomenon, other European countries in particular have now themselves embarked on a process of collective self-examination, deconstructing postwar national myths and at times revealing uncomfortable truths about their own relationship with the Nazi regime. In what Michael Berenbaum has termed the na8 tivization of memory a variety of sometimes conflicting national memories and representations of the period have emerged, reflecting multiple 9 agendas. Each community of memory, to use Halbwachs’s term, reconstructs the war differently according to its own experience. In addition, many seek to appropriate the legacy of Auschwitz for their own pur10 poses. The UK, for example, introduced an annual national Holocaust Remembrance Day in January 2001, one of the aims of which is to promote racial tolerance and understanding. Even Japan can now boast its own Holocaust education center. In the twenty-first century, the Holocaust has become much more than a historical event. It is a staple media topic. It has become an intellectual exercise, as demonstrated by the linguistic sparring at the David Irving trial. The negotiations on payments to former forced laborers have revealed it as a political bargaining or blackmailing tool. Those such as Norman Finkelstein who criticize the apparent “Holocaust industry” are canny enough to realize that it can also mean big business. Put in these terms, German Vergangenheitsbewältigung with regard to the National Socialist past is now just one aspect of a global phenomenon. Indeed, the Holocaust would appear to have usurped Nazism as the defining factor in the Second World War and thereby sapped this of some of its “Germanness.” Some 250 papers were submitted to the week-long academic conference, “Remembering for the Future 2000,” held in Oxford and London in July of the same year. One can count on one hand the number that mentioned Germany at all. The Holocaust has become everyone’s history. And yet at the same time it remains exclusively German in this country’s ethnic ties to the perpetrator regime of National Socialism and its continuing need to reconcile its present identity with a troubled past. After all, while Germany may be treated as an equal partner at the elite levels of politics and business, in the postwar constellation of popular and

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stereotypical national myths — whether reflected in crude football chants or the tabloid press — the assumed guilt for National Socialist crimes continues to fall squarely on German shoulders. To understand the impact this must have on younger generations, one should, as Geoffrey Wheatcroft suggests, imagine the rock-and-roll youth of 1950s Britain being confronted with guilt for the Boer War. In this essay I will consider the phenomenon of the ever-present National Socialist past in Germany since the advent of the so-called Berlin 11 Republic in autumn 1998. I will argue that despite attempts to secure a less labored approach to this past, its legacy continues to perpetuate a kind of dialectic between the need to preserve memory of past atrocities and the desire to pursue a “normal” existence in the present. In view of the seemingly ineffaceable shadow of “Auschwitz,” I will conclude by suggesting how this legacy might best be transmitted as well as indicating a potential shift in the way it is remembered. As the “politics of memory” in present-day Germany are in constant flux, I cannot claim to give an exhaustive account of events and developments, but rather to provide some illustrative examples. One of the main examples will be the Holocaust monument to be built in Berlin, which has provoked an almost thirteen-year-long debate on memory of the National Socialist past and its concrete representation in the new capital of a united Germany.

From Memory to History? The National Socialist Past and the Berlin Republic For some commentators, the establishment of the SPD/Green coalition government led by Gerhard Schröder in the autumn of 1998 marked a sea-change in terms of attitudes to the National Socialist past. This can be illustrated with reference to two linked developments. First, a shift in the nature of memory of this past itself. Contemporary academic and political discourse continues to refer, in my view inappropriately, to collective memory and the need to remember. Memory of the period has of course never been a mirror image but rather a reconstruction viewed and modified through the prism of present circumstances. It has also never been collective in the sense of universal, encompassing all members of German society. There is a whole kaleidoscope of collective or group memories of the period: a prisoner of war would be at home in a different narrative from that of a Nazi bureaucrat or a victim of a bombing raid. Moreover, one cannot be called upon to remember something that one has not experienced. With the number of those with direct memory of the Second World War fading fast, in twenty-first century Germany

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what is at stake is rather the transmission of knowledge or interpretation and its translation into national memory, an officially promoted version of events which can inform the identity of younger generations. To use Assmann’s terms, there is by now a definitive shift from communicative to cultural memory of the Third Reich (Assmann 1999). According to his theory, communicative memory is the exchange of direct, biographical experience in the framework of the collective. After a period of around eighty years, it fades into cultural — that is nondirect — memory, which is exclusive, formal, and structured, requiring “props” to keep it alive, such as monuments, speeches, books, and films. It is shaped by elite groups in society, in Germany largely politicians, intellectuals and, increasingly, the media. The perception of the National Socialist past held by younger generations is then heavily influenced by the cultural memory transmitted to them as historical consciousness. It is subject to instrumentalization, manipulation, and ritualization, depending on the nature of the elites that are dominant within the national discourse. The shift from communicative to cultural memory of the National So12 cialist past was of course already underway during the Kohl era. However, it is now bound up with a second aspect characterizing the Berlin Republic, that is, generational change. Schröder heads the first postwar government whose members have no direct memory of the Third Reich. He represents a generation whose founding historical moment is 1968 — or even 1989 — and for whom the Nazi past is perhaps more of an alien baggage than a moral concern. One can quite legitimately ask the question as to what role the negative myth of National Socialism really plays in the lives of modern Germans. For the so-called “89er” or “Spaßgeneration” 13 (fun generation) in particular, which has little or no memory of German division, let alone the Second World War, the Third Reich is surely something to be learnt about at school, depicted in films and debated by intel14 lectuals in the Feuilletons but not agonized over daily. Germans have more pressing concerns — the single currency, tax reform, the fortunes of the national football team, or the financial misdemeanors of the CDU. After decades of national hand-wringing Germans are perhaps even learning to laugh at themselves. There have been plans for some of Germany’s best known actors to star in a film portraying Hitler and Goebbels as comic characters (Helm 2000: 19), while in July 2000 the artist Achim Greser produced a book of satirical cartoons portraying the Führer as a buffoon (Paterson 2000: 30).

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“A Nation That Committed These Crimes 15 Is Not So Normal After All”: The Dialectic of Normality Schröder has boldly defined contemporary Germans as “ein normales Volk” (Hoffmann and Löffler 1999: 35). And yet it is not as simple as that. One may be able to laugh at a caricature of Hitler but one cannot laugh at the Holocaust. Germany is a successful liberal democracy, a civil society that respects human rights. And yet it was also the root of the ultimate crime against humanity in the twentieth century. Hence, while Germany can compare itself with other “normal” nations in the present, it is precisely this present normality that throws the absolute abnormality of the Third Reich past into sharp relief. In this sense, the Berlin Republic is faced with an apparent “dialectic of normality.” This is borne out by the constant stream of debates on the Nazi period that suggest the ever-present fear that civil society might slither back into a state of noncivility. Even if there is perhaps no actual angst that Nazism might repeat itself, there is in the German political culture of today, as well as in that of many other democratic countries, a constant vigilance to combat the beginnings of fascist manifestations in public life. While the British Holocaust Remembrance Day exemplifies fears about the fragility of civilization in all Western-style democracies, in Germany the dialectic of normality impinges on both domestic and foreign policy in practical terms. The compensation due to former forced laborers agreed to by major German businesses is a case in point. Unless they pay for the sins of the past they are threatened with obstacles to trade, and of course reputation, in the present. The Green Card initiative to bring foreigners into Germany to cover the skills shortage in various industrial sectors has been carried out against the backdrop of increased neo-Nazi violence, which can lead to the country being judged by the standards of its past rather than its present. Involvement of German soldiers in the 1999 Kosovo conflict inevitably led to mental associations with their counterparts in the Second World War, and the planned appointment of the German general Klaus Reinhardt to lead KFOR-troops provoked ripples of disapproval and discontent (Schwennicke 1999: 1). The MaxPlanck Gesellschaft, a leading institution for the promotion of scientific research, has apologized for the involvement of its predecessor institute, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft, in Nazi medical experiments on humans (Halter 2001), while the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft has also recently acknowledged the need to investigate its links with National

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Socialism. Even plans for a new underground car park in Berlin have come under fire as construction may mean temporarily covering up the glass monument marking the Nazi book-burning of 1933 set into the 17 Bebelplatz and the car park would be built around the monument. The new capital in effect exemplifies the dialectic of normality. In its efforts to become a world metropolis it is almost trying hard — but in vain — to pave over a troubled past. Jane Kramer makes the tongue-incheek comment that “only in Berlin will you hear that a middle-sized, medium-priced department store with seventeen brands of tights and fresh breakfast pastries in the basement is a field of battle for nothing less than the soul of Germany” (1999: 54). Joking apart, one might well ask how Germany can be expected to be normal when a huge Holocaust monument, deemed part of the 18 negative foundation myth of the Berlin Republic, will be erected in view of the new, high-tech premises of Sony, Deutsche Bahn, and Daimler-Chrysler, apparently positive manifestations of a continuing Wirtschaftswunder. Designed by the American Jewish architect Peter Eisenman, the “central monument for the murdered Jews of Europe” will comprise 2,700 concrete posts of between one and four meters in height and a mere ninety centimeters apart, positioned at a slight slant. It is to be built on a site measuring over twenty-thousand square meters between Berlin’s historic Brandenburg Gate and the ultra-modern business and shopping complex at Potsdamer Platz; a mere stone’s throw 19 away from the former Reich Chancellery of Adolf Hitler. There will also be an underground information center containing four rooms. As well as a “Room of Silence” there will be a “Room of Fate” containing the biographies of twelve families who became victims of the Holocaust, a “Room of Places” with details of the extermination camps, and a “Room of Names” giving electronic access to the details of 4.5 million Holocaust victims provided by Jad Vaschem. The history of the monument is a good example of the direct impact 20 of the dialectic of normality on contemporary Germany. Whether an attempt to draw a definitive line under the past or a reiteration of the need to continue to work through it, the monument will present inhabitants of and visitors to the city with a concrete and permanent reminder of German atrocities towards the Jews. The monument was originally proposed in 1988 by the Berlin journalist Lea Rosh. She set up a private foundation (Förderkreis) to sponsor the monument the following year and has been a tireless campaigner for what many see as “her” 21 cause ever since. An open competition for the monument in 1994 22 attracted some 528 designs of varying quality. The favored design, a

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kind of tilted memorial slab into which the names of all of the Jewish 23 Holocaust victims were to be engraved as “work in progress,” was eventually vetoed by the then Chancellor Helmut Kohl. In 1997, three colloquia of international experts were set up to discuss the plans. There followed a new competition with nineteen selected artists, which pro24 duced four finalists. In the end Eisenman’s design was the only one left in the running, but this was blocked by Berlin’s mayor Eberhard Diepgen who deemed it too “monumental” (Winden 1998: 4). The decision was then postponed until after the federal elections in 1998 to avoid its becoming a campaign issue. In January 1999 the newly appointed State Minister of Culture, Michael Naumann, negotiated a compromise with Eisenman, whereby the monument would be linked to a “house of memory” and flanked by a one-hundred-meter by twenty-meter glass and steel wall filled with a million books on the destruction of European 25 Jewry. However, this solution violated the terms of the tender, which called for a monument and not a museum, and would have been far too expensive. Moreover, the competition had not been formally concluded. The situation having reached stalemate, it became a matter for the politicians to decide. The culture committee in the Bundestag debated six possible options, including various versions of Eisenman’s design and a proposal, by the politician Richard Schröder, to build two steel obelisks with “thou shalt not kill” inscribed on them in Hebrew and the lan26 guages of the other Holocaust victims. In June 1999 the Bundestag took its final decision. A majority voted for the so-called “Eisenman II” design plus a small information center. The vote also stipulated that the monument would be for the Jews alone rather than all groups of vic27 tims. But with matters of finance in particular still unresolved the debate is far from over. This overview demonstrates how the debate on the monument, and thus the correct form of Holocaust remembrance, has been conducted at all levels of society: it has indeed become a kind of public monument to the German discourse on Vergangenheitsbewältigung. It was always going to be a highly political issue, but opinions remained divided within the political parties: this was then about individual as well as national perceptions of the Holocaust. Moreover, the monument was first and foremost a citizens’ initiative rather than a matter for elites: Rosh has continued to stress that the monument should reflect the will of the people rather than be a national political symbol. The Förderkreis aims to raise five million marks in donations for the monument to add to the fifty million being provided by the German government. The paradoxical nature of remembering an abnormal past in the “normal” present be-

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comes particularly apparent if one considers the way that the monument project has had to draw on traditional tricks of advertising, marketing, and PR to raise support and the all-important funds. The other clear pointer from the Holocaust monument debate is that the dialectic of normality is far from disappearing. One could surmise that the remaining members of the Third Reich generation maintain this dialectic through their inability to integrate into the community of memory of a “normal” Germany. Yet despite the “Gnade der späten 28 Geburt,” many younger Germans seem unwilling to forget — or for29 give — the atrocities of the past. Brought up in a continent now united and at peace, it is of course difficult for them to accept that the crimes of the Third Reich were committed in the name of the German nation, and indeed outside pressure is just as much to blame for perpetuating the 30 dialectic. German politicians are in a sense duty-bound to “mention the war” at regular intervals. Both Schröder and Kohl have remarked that if they had said no to the Holocaust monument they would have been deemed Schlußstrichpolitiker. In a sense, postwar Germany has developed, and indeed flourished, on the basis of the dialectic of normality. The democratic institutions and Grundgesetz were essentially imposed under abnormal circumstances but have since come to embody a system based on the principle of “nie wieder” that bears silent witness to the victims of National Socialism. 31 The Geschichtspolitik of successive postwar leaders has been an exercise in managing this dialectic by attempting to draw a normal German identity from an abnormal past. But this also means that up to now a positive political identity has continued to be overshadowed by a negative history.

Living with the Enemy: Schröder’s “Neue Unbefangenheit” and the Positive Side of the Dialectic of Normality Gerhard Schröder has often been criticized for an apparently flippant attitude to the German past, especially when compared to the historical pathos of his predecessor Kohl. However, the attitude he represents can perhaps best be described as “living with the enemy.” If Germany is to be a normal nation it cannot draw a line under its National Socialist past as this would mean denying part of its ethnic identity. Instead, the normality of the Berlin Republic involves acknowledging this past but not being fettered by the moral chains of its remembrance either. Schröder’s call for a “neue Unbefangenheit” (Mohr 1998: 41) has been criticized

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as a rejection of decades of political Vergangenheitsbewältigung but should be read as the attempt to achieve a sense of normality based on open acknowledgment of past crimes, in other words accepting both Buchenwald and Weimar as constituent elements of the national myth. In concrete terms, this attitude is illustrated in the new-look Reichstag. Norman Foster’s architecture, especially the glass dome, symbolizes the democracy of which Germany can be rightly proud, but retains the Cyrillic graffiti written on it on the day that the Reichstag fell to the Red Army. With regard to the Holocaust monument, while the tender for the open competition in 1994 called for an artistic symbiosis of mourning, 32 shock, and respect together with reflection upon shame and guilt, Schröder has referred to it simply as “ein Ort, wo man gerne hingeht” (Mohr 1998: 45). One cannot imagine Kohl ever using such a phrase. And yet Schröder’s comments on the monument emphasize that remembrance is nowadays about responsibility and not guilt. He has deemed it ein Ort des Erinnerns derer, die eigene Erinnerungen nicht haben können. Daneben ist es auch ein Ort der Auseinandersetzung mit diesem Teil der Geschichte . . . Leute, die keine eigene Erinnerungen haben — das betrifft meine Generation und die Generationen, die danach kommen —, sollten ohne Schuldkomplexe herumlaufen können. (Hoff33 mann and Löffler 1999: 35)

While acknowledging Berlin’s troubled history, Schröder has been quick to place it into the correct historical context. In the Regierungserklärung of April 1999 he stated: Sicher: Der Umzug nach Berlin ist auch eine Rückkehr in die deutsche Geschichte, an den Ort zweier deutscher Diktaturen, die großes Leid über die Menschen in Deutschland und Europa gebracht haben. Aber “Reichstag” mit “Reich” gleichzusetzen, wäre genauso unsinnig, wie Berlin mit Preußens Gloria und deutschem Zentralismus zu verwechseln. Das föderative Modell deutscher Politik ist bewährt und nicht im geringsten gefährdet . . . wie Bonn schließlich doch für den Westen der 34 Republik steht, [symbolisiert] Berlin das vereinte Deutschland.

Things have also changed in terms of Germany’s foreign and European policy. For Kohl, the Europeanization of Germany represented the attempt to anchor it into a stable international system and prevent a dangerous renationalization of memory. For Schröder the process of integration is so far advanced “daß diese Art von nationaler Individualität nicht mehr erlaubt ist. Die Deutschen sind nicht nur Europäer, weil sie müssen, sondern mindestens auch, weil sie wollen und es dazu keine Alternative gibt” (Hoffmann and Löffler 1999: 35; my italics).

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Germany now seems to have mastered its past to the extent that it can be used to push forward its own agenda. When Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer spoke of the importance of eastward enlargement of the EU as compensation for this past during a speech on the future of Europe at the Humboldt University in Berlin, he was surely also fully aware of the economic and political advantages this could bring to Berlin as a bridge between East and West (see Fischer 2000). The new parameters of Geschichtspolitik were perhaps best exemplified by German intervention in the 1999 Balkan war. Germany entered this war not “gegen” but rather “wegen” Auschwitz, as a “normal” nation that however remembers the abnormality of its past and has learned from it. At the time, Schröder stated: Uns steht das Argument “Wegen der deutschen Geschichte geht es nicht” nicht mehr zur Verfügung . . . Weil wir dort solche vielfältigen Verwüstungen angerichtet haben, sind wir besonders gefordert, Mord, ja vielleicht sogar Völkermord zu verhindern . . . Normalität kann auch belastend sein. (Hoffmann and Löffler 1999: 34; my italics)

Rather than being a cautionary instance, Germany’s negative national myth can be said to have evolved into a moral duty or vocation to intervene on the world stage and prevent another “Auschwitz,” defined as a violation of human rights. Some benefit may then have finally emerged from a previously introverted and pessimistic process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, with Germany championing a new universal humanitarian myth. In the process, its “Bewährungsauflage,” as Jan Ross termed it in 1998, may finally be at an end with the emphasis on the National Socialist past as a “lesson learnt” rather than a “punishment earnt.”

Instrumentalizing the Dialectic of Normality Open contrition for the sins of the past may legitimize a new German sovereignty but it can also be construed as self-promotion, particularly in the framework of Geschichtspolitik. In 1998, Heinz-August Winkler wrote that after unification the Holocaust was upheld as the reason why Germany had to act in a fundamentally different way from other Western democracies in the face of new crimes against humanity. Germans had been “chosen” to commit the absolute evil and were now justified, indeed obliged, to emphasize their negative record in the face of any “unwelcome competition.” In this respect, there are various areas in which the National Socialist past is 35 instrumentalized for somewhat dubious motives in the present. These are defined below as (1) the culture of complaint, (2) “Deutschmeister des 36 Trauerns,” and (3) breaking and burying the taboo.

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The Culture of Complaint In his book The Culture of Complaint, Robert Hughes argues that contemporary American culture is being corroded by false victimhood, a “culture of therapeutics” where openly confessing one’s sins is tantamount to redemption (1993: 9). With regard to Germany, already in 1946 Karl Jaspers was warning of a certain “self-righteous” attitude towards the National Socialist past (1974: 73). More recently, in his controversial “Friedenspreisrede” in 1998, Martin Walser asked: könnte es sein, daß die Intellektuellen . . . dadurch, daß sie uns die Schande vorhalten, eine Sekunde lang der Illusion verfallen, sie hätten sich, weil sie wieder im grausamen Erinnerungsdienst gearbeitet haben, ein wenig entschuldet, seien für einen Augenblick sogar näher bei den Opfern als bei den Tätern? (17)

The idea is that by bravely addressing the “taboo” issue of the Holocaust and proclaiming one’s “guilt” for it, one can thereby deflect this guilt, disassociate oneself from the past, and even associate oneself with the 37 victims. In the process, one could be talking about the sins of another nation altogether. Henryk Broder refers to the participants in the 1997 colloquia of experts in Berlin to discuss the proposed Holocaust monument, who pondered deeply on issues of shame, guilt, mourning, and responsibility before engaging in relaxed discussions over lunch about who had recently been appointed to which memorial committee and why. At the end of the day’s proceedings they could return home, confident of having done their fair share of “memory work” (Broder 1997a: 73). Broder is of course parodying the nature of intellectual discourse, but the culture of complaint would appear to stretch beyond the intellectual classes. After all, the 528 entries for the first competition did not just come from artists but also from the general public. The German public has since been the target of fund-raising activities for the monument, basically encouraging them to “buy off” a sense of assumed guilt by making a donation. In the framework of the “Flintstein” initiative in November 2000, for example, citizens could buy a stone with “Denkstein” printed on it for 50 DM as their “contribution” to the monument; the implication being that those who do not participate are still guilty. If a new collective self is emerging perhaps it is one based on apparent “persecution” and “collective innocence” with regard to the National Socialist past. This would fit one commentator’s view of the Berlin Republic as “apologetic and aggressive to extremes” (Moore 1999: 26).

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“Deutschmeister des Trauerns” By focusing on what Hughes terms “the twin fetishes of victimhood and redemption” (1993: 11) at the core of the culture of complaint, it is all too easy to forget the existence of the real victims. To return to the Holocaust monument, Habermas (1999: 43) has deemed it “tat- und täterzentriert,” a key to German national identity. After the Bundestag decision, Wolfgang Thierse asserted that the monument was not to be 38 built for the Jews but for “us.” If this view is representative, then the tables have been turned and we are witnessing a celebration of Vergangenheitsbewältigung rather than a gesture to mourn the victims whose death created the term in the first place; a demonstration of “negative nationalism” par excellence. The apparent obsession with guilt and responsibility indeed suggests a deliberately negative German selfstereotype, or “Nationalmasochismus” (Mohler 1965: 146). In an article about the opening of the Leo-Baeck-Haus in Berlin, the Süddeutsche Zeitung stated that the German capital would not be normal for a long time to come because the people of Berlin did not want it to be (Bullion 1999: 10). This would suggest that, perversely, Germany’s negative national myth has been turned into a source of assertive national pride, in the sense that, to cite Broder, “Den Holocaust macht uns keiner nach — seine Bewältigung auch nicht!” (1995: 222). As a further example, with regard to compensation payments made to former forced laborers, Lutz Niethammer (1999: 66) has said, rather smugly, that it was right for over 100 billion marks to be paid out in reparations, mostly to Jewish victims, and that this should give rise to a sense of national pride. Breaking and Burying the Taboo The assumed “victory” over the shadows of the past at the same time shows the desire to draw a conclusive line under it. Habermas has praised the efforts of the “Täterkinder” to confront the Nazi past in building the Holocaust monument, a monument being the only way to attest to their will and message (Habermas 1999: 44). And yet could it be that this will and message, analogous to that of the “vaterlose Gesellschaft” of the 39 1960s, is a revolt against the National Socialist past, an attempt on the part of postwar generations to shake off the assumed guilt and burden of memory placed on their shoulders as descendants of the Third Reich? Proof of the determination of the “Täterkinder” to laud their victory over the “Tätergeneration” — and the ultimate irony of the whole monument debate — was demonstrated in 1998 when bulldozers dug up remains of Hitler’s bunker and other Nazi buildings while preparing the site for the

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proposed monument. Peter Strieder, the Berlin senator for urban planning responsible for the digging, justified this with the words: “Wir wissen über das Leben der Nazi-Größen genug” (quoted in Augstein 1998: 28). It is as if now over fifty years after the war it is important to prove to the Nazis 40 that they really have lost the war (Broder 1995: 224). The numerous authentic — and undoubtedly more uncomfortable — references to this war, such as the former concentration camps, also seem to have been conveniently bulldozed from memory in the process.

The Dangers of the Globalization of Auschwitz This attitude is both understandable as a rejection of the identity associated with past atrocities and illustrative of the dangers of what Martin Walser has termed the “Dauerpräsentation unserer Schande” (1998: 18), particularly in the media. In the growing absence of communicative memory the National Socialist past — or, more strictly speaking, the Holocaust alone — is subject to the whims of a largely media-based “memory industry,” in the sense of a constant focus on these issues, which affords it a devilish, but also trivialized or aestheticized fascination, often devoid of understanding. As Dominick Lacapra points out: The prevalence of ignorance and avoidance concerning the Shoah has not been lessened but, if anything, intensified by its recent use as a media allusion or kitsch background element. . . . [S]uch use normalizes it or even reduces it to a throwaway commodity, assuming knowledge about it that does not really exist and therefore producing only a vague, titillating shock-effect when the Shoah bell is rung. (1998: 141)

From this perspective, German history has been reduced to one word, “Auschwitz.” This perpetuates a subjective, one-sided — and potentially distorted — view that ignores the social and political context of the Second World War. The Holocaust monument could well fall into this trap. It may provoke initial shock but reaction and subsequent discussion are most likely to be dictated by aesthetic judgment. The information center will be an insufficient pedagogical tool for those with little or no prior knowledge of the period. The other criticism is of course that it deals only with the Jews, seemingly precluding the other victim groups. The architect himself has stated that the monument contains no clear symbols and so presents no obvious narrative for the visitor. This kind of “Faktion” (Klöss 1994: 192) with regard to history is of course is not just confined to Germany. To return to the nativization of memory, films such as Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List may

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be true to life in demonstrating the horrors of war and racist persecution but the viewer may in the process obtain a falsely black-and-white view 41 of history or even identify with the film stars rather than with the facts.

“Erziehung nach Auschwitz” The fascination of evil and the blurring of truth and fiction in the media present a lethal combination that can only be countered by generating knowledge rather than guilt with relation to the Third Reich period. In this respect, Roman Herzog has stated: es kommt nicht allein darauf an, wie darüber gesprochen wird, sondern auch, ob so darüber gesprochen wird, daß es die jungen Menschen ver42 stehen und die richtigen Folgerungen daraus ziehen.

This requires a balance between the abnormality and apparent normality of the period, for constant confrontation with horrific images of the concentration camps inevitably leads younger generations to “turn away” from their national past. In this respect, the concept of Erziehung nach Auschwitz, based on Adorno’s sentiments (1969: 85–101), still has a place in political and moral education. Such education should focus on Erziehung (that is, nurturing values), nach (meaning that a similar catastrophe could happen again, to any other minority group and not just in Germany), and Auschwitz (explaining the mechanisms and circumstances 43 that made the Holocaust possible). Moreover, the Third Reich should be considered from a variety of social and biographical perspectives with the aim of reclaiming the history of individuals and not just statistics. In the process, one should not dismiss the potential of the media industry outright. A well-made television documentary or a successful exhibition can perhaps arouse more empathy on the part of the public than a series of ritualistic political speeches. To cite one example, in 1999 the UK screened a documentary series called The Second World War in Colour which used a variety of footage and personal sources, with political speeches in the background, to give a human face to the war. The 1961 Eichmann trial had revealed the “banality of evil,” as the public was confronted with a crumpled looking middle-aged man instead of some kind of “fanged monster.” This documentary showed Hitler enjoying tea and biscuits with Lloyd George and his wife at his hunting lodge in Bavaria, looking every inch the civilized gentleman. Seeing Hitler as a real man is one of the keys to understanding the Second World War as part of the real world, and in turn the Holocaust as part of this war rather than separate from it.

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Remembering for the Future, Engaging with the Present: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide The genocide of the Holocaust remains unique in terms of its organization, implementation, and scale. And yet evil did not stop with Auschwitz, as subsequent atrocities in Rwanda, Kurdistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, and Kosovo have all demonstrated. To this extent, while the Holocaust can be taken as a universal symbol of evil it should also be considered as a real historical event in the context of an age of genocide. For Mark Levene, the repeated invocation of the phrase “never again” seems hollow and crass in the light of Iraqi “Anfal,” Bosnia, Rwanda, and other known genocides. In his view, it is not enough for Western governments to lament the failures of their predecessors or increasingly commit public funds, political statements, and educational and cultural institutions to the recognition of what was done to the Jews, if the racial persecution of other groups continues. Remembering the Holocaust then requires that links be made 44 between it and the driving forces of contemporary history. This notion has implications for the way the Berlin Republic manages its dialectic of normality. National memory of the Holocaust has up to now provided a defining — negative — historical narrative for postwar Germany, and a common denominator linking east and west Germany since unification. For decades the formation of foreign and domestic policy, in West Germany at least, has been seen in the light of German responsibility for past crimes. And yet both history and political priorities have moved on. Germany’s national, European, and global challenges now largely require present-day solutions rather than the well-worn political rhetoric of “never again.” The current escalation of right-wing extremism in Germany, for example, is attributable to contemporary problems, not to Nazi Germany. It cannot be countered by building a Holocaust monument that will, ironically, require twenty-four hour surveillance and graffiti-proof concrete materials. Jan Ross warns that if Germany remains fixated on Auschwitz and the memory of National Socialism it could well fail to notice or respond to future crimes against humanity, which will probably not resemble Auschwitz (Ross 1998: 3). National memory of the Third Reich period should — and of course will — be kept alive, but not as the dictating force behind political decisions. There are in fact indications of a shift in the priorities and role attached to memory of the National Socialist past in Germany. The debates on the legacy of this past continue apace, but to a certain extent these are

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now overshadowed by contemporary concerns. A key example of this was the demonstration of 9 November 2000 “Wir stehen auf für Menschlichkeit und Toleranz” that brought some two hundred thousand people out onto the streets of Berlin to take a stand against intolerance and racism. The annual commemoration of the Kristallnacht of 9 November 1938 (as well as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989) remained very much in the background. The demonstration was organized by political representatives from the various parties, the Protestant and Catholic Churches in Germany, the Jewish community in Berlin, and the German Trade Union Association. It was largely a response to the increase in far rightwing violence in Germany, which had been a major topic of political and media debate over the summer, and to Gerhard Schröder’s call for an “Aufstand der Anständigen” to combat the problem. The organization produced a statement calling for a humane, open, and tolerant Germany, where people could live peacefully together whatever their weltanschauung, religion, culture, or skin color. It condemned hate, violence, racism, and hostility towards foreigners, anti-Semitism, and attacks on synagogues, religious, or cultural institutions. In addition, it called for people not to “look away” from or show indifference to such developments but to demonstrate civil courage. As a milestone in the good and bad of German history, the 9 November represented an obligation to defend democracy. In other words, this was a plea to uphold the values that had gone astray under National Socialism and that had subsequently been reanchored in the Grundgesetz. Michel Friedman, Vice President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, summed up the clear association between past and present when he referred to the demonstration both as a reminder of 9 November 1938 and a symbolic gesture against the recent attacks on German synagogues. However, the emphasis of this demonstration was very much on the present. As both President Johannes Rau and Paul Spiegel, Head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, pointed out in their speeches at the demonstration, it was also about the image Germany wished to give to 45 the outside world. An advertisement for the Berliner Morgenpost at the time quoted Michel Friedman as saying that Germany had to “show it’s face” (Gesicht zeigen) or else lose face. A wide number of initiatives to promote tolerance and democracy and campaign against racism were set up around the time, ranging from “Gesicht zeigen. Aktion weltoffenes 46 Deutschland e.V.,” to the “Noteingang” scheme where those at threat from racial violence can escape into a public building bearing a certain 47 symbol, to a poster and cinema campaign using the slogan “Rechte Gewalt wird zum Flächenbrand. Sehen Sie nicht tatenlos zu.” Another

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clear sign of the dominance of present concerns in discourse on the past was shown in Johannes Rau’s speech at the annual Volkstrauertag on 19 November 2000, which for the first time mentioned recent victims of hate and violence against foreigners alongside the traditionally remembered victims of the two world wars and National Socialism. The above would suggest that memory of the National Socialist past is now working on two levels. On the one hand there is the ritualized form of cultural memory through speeches, commemorations, and so on that remains necessary for formal remembrance as well as to show respect for the victims. Running parallel to — and sometimes crossing over with — all this is a kind of “active” memory based on the National Socialist legacy and focusing on political and democratic education, applying, indirectly or directly, the “lessons” of this past to challenges in the present. There is of course the danger that the past may be relativized or distorted by aligning it too much with the present: the debates on the far right and National Socialism should not be fused into one. However, this is to a certain extent inevitable, particularly with increased distance from the past. Each generation, as a new community of memory, is going to be confronted with the National Socialist past both in the media and at school but will place it into a narrative shaped according to its own circumstances. Hence, while in the 1970s and 1980s this past was invoked to promote peace and disarmament, it is now being used to protest against the far right. A combination of knowledge of and distance from the period can lead to a healthy attitude whereby young people are interested in their history but also know how to apply the lessons of the period to the present rather than being bitter or plagued with guilt. A form of national memory that goes beyond instrumentalization, empty ritual, or lip-service, coupled with a commitment to the political ideals brought forth by its negative history, would be proof that the Germany of the Berlin Republic both acknowledges and has come to terms with its National Socialist past. The debate on the period could then be productive rather than painful. It remains to be seen whether the younger generation, as vanguard of the collective identity of the future, will choose to close, condemn, or finally accept this most problematic chapter of German history. In the meantime, as long as the world continues to pose itself the question “why?” the debate on the legacy of Auschwitz and with it the dialectic of normality is likely to continue in Germany and beyond.

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Notes 1

See “Die Erinnerung an den Völkermord soll wach gehalten werden,” Handelsblatt (27 January 2000). 2

See “Rede von Bundespräsident Johannes Rau vor Knesset in Jerusalem,” Presseund Informationsamt der Bundesregierung: Pressemitteilung, 16 February 2000. 3

The debate was primarily provoked by the fact that the laudatio was delivered by Horst Möller, the Director of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich. While praising Nolte’s oeuvre as a whole, Möller was however quick to point out that he did not agree with some of Nolte’s theses and formulations, namely the claim that the Nazi genocide had largely been a reaction to the Soviet threat. An article by Nolte in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (1987) stating this argument had been the catalyst for the so-called Historikerstreit of 1986/7. The opposing view was represented by Jürgen Habermas (1987), who emphasized the destructive currents of national memory pre-1933 and that Germany’s deviant Sonderweg (path of history) had led to two world wars. 4

The “Leitkultur” debate was triggered by the CDU politician Friedrich Merz in October 2000 when he used the term in connection with the issue of asylum and immigration in Germany and the rules and principles that should be followed by foreigners coming to live in the country. The meaning is rather ambiguous; it could either refer to the dominant points of culture in Germany or Germany as a dominant culture. The CDU eventually watered it down to the innocuous — and surely selfevident — notion of respecting the German constitution as well as learning the German language (although when asked what “Leitkultur” meant to her, CDU head Angela Merkel replied “Kartoffelsuppe”). The “Nationalstolz” debate arose when Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin accused Laurenz Meyer, general secretary of the CDU, of having the mentality of a “Skinhead” after Meyer described himself as proud to be German in an interview. The result was not only a wealth of media coverage but also a debate on patriotism in the Bundestag. For a concise assessment of both debates, see Connolly (2001). 5

Finkelstein’s main argument is that American Jewish organizations and elites are exploiting the suffering of Jewish victims of the Holocaust to serve their own financial and political ends. He asserts that they are blackmailing West European countries to extract financial compensation in the name of “needy Holocaust victims,” for example by exaggerating the number of Holocaust survivors, and that this money then goes into their own coffers. In Finkelstein’s view this “extortion racket” is stirring up anti-Semitism as well as reducing the moral stature of the martyrdom of Jewish victims to the “status of a Monte Carlo casino” (2000: esp. 8 and 89). 6

Following Adorno, the word “Auschwitz” is here not taken to refer to the actual concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, but rather as “a shorthand for the caesura of Western culture as well as for the deep wound in the body of the Jewish people” (Sicher 1998: 14). The generalization and instrumentalization of the term can be said to have stripped it of its real meaning.

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7

The term Vergangenheitsbewältigung is perhaps the most common term to convey the notion of “overcoming,” “working through,” “dealing with,” or “mastering” the National Socialist past, though it is problematic in implying that the past can be put to rest once and for all. According to Wolfgang Benz, the term officially refers to the political response to the catastrophic consequences of the National Socialist period in postwar Germany (1992: 196). However, in practice it has a much wider moral or metaphysical application, reflected in the Duden dictionary definition: “die (innere) Verarbeitung der Vergangenheit” (Dudenredaktion 1989). 8

Berenbaum’s term was used by Isobel Wollaston in her paper “A War Against Memory? Nativizing the Holocaust,” delivered at the international conference “Remembering for the Future 2000: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide,” held in Oxford and London in July 2000. The full version of the article can be found in Roth and Maxwell (2001). 9

According to the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, memory is never purely individual but shaped in relation to the collective. After all, we do not just remember events in a vacuum but in the framework of a specific time and place and in relation to what others have said to us about it. The individual then relies on the collective to acquire, localize, and recall memories. In Halbwachs’s view, there are as many collective memories as there are different groups in society. Each individual belongs to a plurality of “communities of memory,” including for example the family, school, social class, religion, and nation. Communities of memory reconstruct their own unique understanding of the past by establishing an agreed version of it. In order to reconstruct a certain event, the individual places himself within the context of one of the communities of memory (see Halbwachs 1968). The existence of different communities of memory leads to a variety of perspectives within as well as between countries. In America, for example, Jewish recollections of the Holocaust run parallel to military remembrance. 10

The wide variety of academic conferences on the period is one example of this phenomenon. To give just a few examples, in May 1999 the Berlin conference “Getrennte Vergangenheit, gemeinsame Geschichte?” focused on the legacies of East-West division and the continued discourse on Vergangenheitsbewältigung. A few months later in Vienna the conference “Die Lebendigkeit der Geschichte — the Presence of the Absence” — dealt mainly with Austria’s own emerging national guilt and the fate of the Sinti and Roma in particular. In January 2000 a historical seminar in London centered on extermination policy and the role of food and security policy in the Nazi regime. In the same month, at the international conference in Stockholm political leaders spoke of the Holocaust in terms of education and human rights, whereas the academic conference “Remembering for the Future 2000: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide” held in Oxford and London considered the Holocaust from a variety of predominantly Jewish perspectives. 11

When the “Berlin Republic” came into being, and indeed whether this is an appropriate term, is a matter for debate but for the purposes of this paper it will be taken as commencing with the entry into power of Schröder’s Red-Green coalition in autumn 1998. 12

Assmann mentions a forty-year threshold point which in the case of Germany would have been 1985. This happens to be the year of Richard von Weizsäcker’s

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famous speech to the Bundestag calling for a less punishing attitude to the National Socialist past. On this speech and its impact, see Gill and Steffani (1986). 13

The terms are used by the sociologist Heinz Bude (see Dürr 1999: 14).

14

The increasingly multicultural nature of German society, and in particular the change in the citizenship laws have also had an impact. The transfer from the ius sanguinis to the ius soli principle means that citizenship is no longer based on blood or the idea of the Volk but on political geography. 15

A phrase used by Saul Friedländer (quoted in Kattago 1998: 102).

16

See the “Rede des DFG-Präsidenten anlässlich der Eröffnung der Konferenz zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts,” which can be found at http:// www.dfg.de/ aktuelles_presse/ reden_stellungnahmen/ 2000/ redstell/ dfg_ vergangenheit.html. Moreover, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft has set up a research team to investigate the history of the DFG between 1920 and 1970 (see http:// www.dfg.de/dfg_im_profil/geschichte/aufklaerung_der_dfg_vergangenheit/index.html. 17

Campaigners against the car park have set up their own website. For more information, see http://www.scheinschlag-online.de/archiv/2001/07_2001/texte/07.html. 18

It has been referred to as such by Die Zeit (Assheuer and Lau 1998: 44). Building was originally set to commence on 27 January 1999, but there is still no definitive start date. 19

20

The scope of this article does not allow for a full account of the complex debate surrounding the monument. For a detailed history of the monument, see the volume Der Denkmalstreit, das Denkmal (Heimrod, Schlusche, and Seferens 1999). For an overview of media and academic comment on the monument, see Cullen (1999). The Holocaust monument also has its own website at http://www.holocaust-denkmal.berlin.de. 21

The idea for the monument came after a visit by Rosh and the historian Eberhard Jäckel to the memorial site at Jad Vaschem to shoot a documentary about the murder of European Jews. Both were of the view that there should be a monument to the victims of the Holocaust in the country of the perpetrators as well as in the country of the victims. 22 Henryk Broder was less tactful. After viewing the entries he remarked: “Seit der Erfindung des Nierentisches und der von innen beleuchteten Hausbar hat sich soviel geballte Häßlichkeit nicht gegeben” (1995: 223). For a description of some of the (weird and wonderful) designs in the 1995 competition — including a monument made of combs donated by the visitors and a big wheel with freight trucks instead of seats — see the volume Heimrod, Schlusche, and Seferens (1999). 23

The design was produced by a group of artists led by Christine Jackob-Marks. The other winning entry was by Simon Ungers. It featured four huge double T-shaped steel girders forming a square which could be walked upon. The light would reflect the names of the concentration camps engraved into the steel. 24

Peter Eisenman and Richard Serra envisaged covering the site with concrete posts but Serra was later to withdraw from the project. Daniel Libeskind foresaw five “voids” with concrete walls, Gesine Weinmüller’s design was in the shape of a “deconstructed” Star of David, and Jochen Gerz wished to erect thirty-nine pillars with the inscription “Warum?” (Reinhard Mohr et al. 1998; Broder 1997b). Gerz and

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Libeskind were also to withdraw from the competition, accusing Eisenman of plagiarizing elements of their designs. 25

Reinhard Rürup, the academic director of Berlin’s “Topographie des Terrors,” helpfully pointed out that this many books did not exist on the subject (Heuwagen 1999: 15). 26

The Eisenman designs were “Eisenman I,” the original monument; “Eisenman II,” the original monument reduced to 2,700 steles; and “Eisenman III,” the integrated Naumann concept. A further proposal had no specific design but wished to dedicate the monument to all victims of National Socialism and not just the Jews, while the final proposal was to abandon the project and instead give extra funding to the concentration camp memorial sites. 27

See “Entscheid über Holocaust-Mahnmal. Bundestag stimmt heute endgültig ab,” die tageszeitung (25 June 1999); “Abstimmung im Bundestag. Die erste Wahl ist ‘Eisenman II,’” die tageszeitung (25 June 1999): 2. 28 The term was coined by Helmut Kohl to describe those who had been born too late to have any direct memory of the Second World War. 29

To give an example relating to the Holocaust monument, at a demonstration on 30 May 1999, a group of young Germans from the “Initiativkreis gegen das Vergessen” distributed a pamphlet asserting that Germany could never be a “normal” nation and opposing what they saw as the attempt to end the official debate on National Socialist crimes with the monument as well as the fund for former Nazi slave laborers. Posters were put up around the area of the demonstration with the names of teachers, doctors, and lawyers who had been members of the Nazi party but had kept their jobs in postwar Germany. More recently, protesters at a Berlin debate featuring Norman Finkelstein in February 2001 held banners linking the “Holocaust industry” to German businesses expected to pay into the fund to compensate former slave laborers. 30

As Jeffrey Herf points out, “since 1945 each effort to ‘finally’ put the past behind has elicited protests from a minority coalition of memory composed of voices of the many ‘other Germanys,’ fellow Europeans, and survivors of the Holocaust, their children and grandchildren” (1998). 31 Edgar Wolfrum uses the term to describe how history is dealt with as a political event in democracies, with special focus on the motives of the political actors involved (1998: 4–5). 32

“Vom Mahnmal zum Wahnmal,” Der Spiegel 35 (1998): 170–78.

33

Schröder’s use of terminology is interesting here. In stating that those born after the war should not have a guilt complex, he seems to be implying that the war generation should. A guilt complex would however suggest an almost clinical pathology, that is a permanent, though perhaps invalid, feeling of guilt. It would perhaps be more appropriate to refer to awareness of guilt. 34

See the “Regierungserklärung abgegeben von Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder zum Stand der deutschen Einheit vor dem deutschen Bundestag, Reichstagsgebäude Berlin am 19. April 1999,” Presse und Informationsdienst der Bundesregierung, Pressemitteilung, 19 April 1999.

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35

The instrumentalization of German guilt for present-day motives (“Instrumentalisierung unserer Schande zu gegenwärtigen Zwecken”) was one of the tendencies criticized by Martin Walser in his “Friedenspreisrede” (1998: 17).

36

These examples all relate to Germany, but bearing in mind the global nature of the Holocaust the categories could also be applied to the situation in other countries. 37

The idea is explored further by Martin Walser in the essay “Unser Auschwitz” (1997: 187–203). 38 See “Große Mehrheit für das Holocaust-Mahnmal,” Süddeutsche Zeitung (26 June 1999): 1. 39

This term was coined by the psychologist Alexander Mitscherlich (see Mitscherlich 1969). 40

There have been disputes about the fate of the bunker, which was apparently discovered as a result of a forty-centimeter miscalculation by building workers. While Daniel Goldhagen said that it should become the property of UNESCO or some other international body as a global memorial to the terror of war, others would rather see it covered up, fearing that the far right might use it as some kind of shrine to Hitler (Hall 1999: 20). 41 Ironically, the Polish town of Kazimierz, where the film Schindler’s List was made, has become more of a monument to Spielberg and his view of the Holocaust than to the genuine past. See Natan Sznaider, “Schweben über den Grabern. Der kommerzialisierte Holocaust: Notizen aus Krakau,” Süddeutsche Zeitung (20 July 1999): 13. 42

Quoted in “Herzog: Die Erinnerung an das Geschehene weitergeben. Gedenken an die Pogromnacht vom 9. November 1938,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (10 November 1998): 1. 43

For an overview of the concepts of “Erziehung nach Auschwitz” as well as the American-based “Holocaust Education” in contemporary teaching programs, see Abram and Heyl (1996). The educational program of memorial sites such as the House of the Wannsee Conference is very much geared to an interdisciplinary and active approach to learning about the Third Reich period. Students, for example, are encouraged to analyze topics for themselves through media resources, group discussions, and presentations as well as to consider the relation of historical themes to the present. See, for example, Gedenk- und Bildungsstätte Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz, Das Bildungsangebot (brochure from the House of the Wannsee Conference, no date), and Gryglewski and Kreutzmüller (2000). 44

See Mark Levene, “Remembering for the Future: Engaging with the Present,” abstract for the conference “Remembering for the Future 2000.” 45

See “‘Gebt dem Hass und der Gewalt keine Chance!’ Rede von Bundespräsident Johannes Rau” and “‘Hören Sie damit auf, verbal zu zündeln,’ Rede des Präsidenten des Zentralrats der Juden in Deutschland Paul Spiegel anlässlich der Veranstaltung zum Gedenken an die Reichspogromnacht am 9. November 1938,” Die Welt (10 November 2000). For the complete speeches, see http://www.welt.de/daten/2000/11/10/1110 pod201608.htx and http://www.welt.de/daten/2000/11/10/1110pod201606.htx.

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46

The initiative was set up in 2000 by Paul Spiegel and Michel Friedman from the Central Council of Jews in Germany and Uwe Karsten-Heye, spokesman for the Federal Government. The patron is President Johannes Rau. Further details about its aims and activities can be found on the website http://www.gesichtzeigen.de. 47

For further information, see http://www.aktion-noteingang-berlin.de.

Works Cited Abram, Ido, and Matthias Heyl. Thema Holocaust. Ein Buch für die Schule. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1996. Adorno, Theodor. “Erziehung nach Auschwitz.” In Stichworte. Kritische Modelle 2. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1969, 85–101. ———. Stichworte. Kritische Modelle 2. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1969. Assheuer, Thomas, and Jörg Lau. “Niemand lebt im Augenblick. Ein Gespräch mit den Kulturwissenschaftlern Aleida und Jan Assmann über deutsche Geschichte, deutsches Gedenken und den Streit um Martin Walser.” Die Zeit (3 December 199): 43–44. Assmann, Jan. Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1999. Augstein, Rudolf. “Braune Suppe im Boden.” Der Spiegel 8 (1998): 28–29. Benz, Wolfgang. Legenden, Lügen, Vorurteile. Ein Wörterbuch zur Zeitgeschichte. Munich: dtv, 1992. Broder, Henryk. “Auf der Höhe der Zeit.” Der Spiegel 48 (1997b): 64–67. ———. “Dabeisein ist alles.” Der Spiegel 15 (1997a): 70–74. ———. “Deutschmeister des Trauerns.” Der Spiegel 16 (1995): 222–24. Bullion, Constanze. “Schöne Worte, schwierige Themen.” Süddeutsche Zeitung (21 April 1999): 10. Connolly, Kate. “Germans split on right to be proud.” The Observer (25 March 2001). Cullen, Michael S., ed. Das Holocaust-Mahnmal. Dokumentation einer Debatte. Zurich: Pendo, 1999. Dudenredaktion, ed. Duden Deutsches Universal Wörterbuch A-Z. Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut, 1989. Dürr, Tobias. “Von Machern und Halbstarken. Die Bundesrepublik und ihre Generationen — Interview mit dem Soziologen Heinz Bude.” Die Zeit (20 May 1999): 14.

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Eisenman, Peter. “Dem eigenen Unbewußtsein ins Gesicht schauen. Ein Mahnmal, das auf einen Bruch in der deutschen Geschichte deutet. Ein Gespräch mit Peter Eisenman.” Interview in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (22 September 1998): 43. Finkelstein, Norman. The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. London and New York: Verso, 2000. Fischer, Joschka. “Vom Staatenverbund zur Föderation — Gedanken über die Finalität der europäischen Integration.” Rede des Bundesministers des Auswärtigen am 12. Mai 2000 in der Humboldt-Universität in Berlin (www.auswaertiges-amt.de/www/de/infoservice/download/pdf/reden/2000/ r000512a.pdf). Füßmann, Klaus, Heinrich Theodor Grütter, and Jörn Rüsen, eds. Historische Faszination. Geschichtskultur heute. Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau, 1994. Gedenk- und Bildungsstätte Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz. Das Bildungsangebot (brochure from the House of the Wannsee Conference, no date). Gill, Ulrich, and Winfried Steffani, eds. Eine Rede und ihre Wirkung. Die Rede des Bundespräsidenten Richard von Weizsäcker vom 8. Mai 1985. Betroffene nehmen Stellung. Berlin: Rainer Röll, 1986. Gryglewski, Elke, and Christoph Kreutzmüller. führeinander. Pädagogisches Arbeitsmittel und Kopiervorlagen zur Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus. Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 2000. Habermas, Jürgen. “Eine Art Schadensabwicklung. Die apologetische Tendenzen in der deutschen Geschichtsschreibung.” In Ernst Reinhard Piper, Historikerstreit. Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung. Munich: Piper, 1987, 62–77. ———. “Der Zeigefinger. Die Deutschen.” Die Zeit (31 March 1999): 42–44. Halbwachs, Maurice. La mémoire collective. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968. Hall, Allen. “Hitler’s Bunker Divides Germany.” The [London] Times (16 November 1999): 20. Halter, Hans. “Erinnerung an den Teufel.” Der Spiegel 24 (2001): 224–25. Heimrod, Ute, Günter Schlusche, and Horst Seferens, eds. Der Denkmalstreit, das Denkmal. Die Debatte um das “Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas.” Bodenheim: Philo, 1999. Helm, Toby. “Germany prepares to laugh at Hitler.” The Telegraph (6 July 2000): 19. Herf, Jeffrey. “A New Schlußstrichmentalität? The Schröder Government, the Berlin Memorial and the Politics of Memory.” Paper for the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS), 1998.

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Heuwagen, Marianne. “Ein Mal ist genug.” Süddeutsche Zeitung (5 February 1999): 15. Hoffmann, Günter, and Sigrid Löffler. “Eine offene Republik. Ein ZeitGespräch mit Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder über das geplante Holocaust-Mahnmal, die Folgen der Walser-Bubis Debatte und den Wiederaufbau des Berliner Schlosses.” Die Zeit (4 February 1999): 33–35. Hughes, Robert. The Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America. Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 1993. Jaspers, Karl. Die Schuldfrage. Von der politischen Haftung Deutschlands [1946]. Munich: Piper, 1974. Kattago, Siobhan. “Representing Victimhood and Guilt: The Neue Wache and Unified German Memory.” German Politics and Society 16:3 (1998): 86–105. Klöss, Erhard. “Die Last der Bilder-Geschichte im Fernsehen.” In Historische Faszination. Geschichtskultur heute, ed. Klaus Füßmann, Heinrich Theodor Grütter, and Jörn Rüsen. Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau, 1994, 189–95. Kramer, Jane. “Letter from Europe: Living with Berlin.” The New Yorker (5 July 1999): 52–56. Lacapra, Dominick. History and Memory after Auschwitz. Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1998. Lenz, Susanne. “Um das Mahnmal herum sollen Autos parken.” Berliner Zeitung (10 April 2001): 19. Maxwell, Elisabeth, and John K. Roth, eds. Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocides. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001. Mitscherlich, Alexander. Society Without the Father: A Contribution to Social Psychology. London: Tavistock Publications, 1969. Mohler, Armin. Was die Deutschen fürchten. Angst vor der Politik, Angst vor der Geschichte, Angst vor der Macht. Stuttgart-Degerloch: Sewald, 1965. Mohr, Reinhard. “Total normal?” Der Spiegel 49 (1998): 40–48. Mohr, Reinhard, with Jürgen Hohmeyer, and Johannes Saltzwedel. “Vom Mahnmal zum Wahnmal.” Der Spiegel 35 (1998): 170–78. Moore, Rowan. “A Defiant Landing by the New-look German Eagle.” London Evening Standard (9 February 1999): 26–27. Niethammer, Lutz. “Ein Spiegel-Gespräch mit Lutz Niethammer. ‘Wir wollen mit uns ins reine kommen.’” Interview in Der Spiegel 22 (1999): 64–70. Nolte, Ernst. “Vergangenheit, die nicht vergehen will.” In Ernst Reinhard Piper, Historikerstreit. Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung. Munich: Piper, 1987, 39–48. Paterson, Tony. “German Satirists Finally Break Hitler Taboo.” Sunday Telegraph (9 July 2000): 30.

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Piper, Ernst Reinhard. Historikerstreit. Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung. Munich: Piper, 1987. “Regierungserklärung abgegeben von Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder zum Stand der deutschen Einheit vor dem deutschen Bundestag, Reichstagsgebäude Berlin am 19. April 1999.” Presse und Informationsdienst der Bundesregierung, Pressemitteilung, 19 April 1999. Ross, Jan. “Aus Auschwitz lernen? Das Gedenken ist nicht deshalb wichtig, weil es für die politische Moral nützlich wäre.” Die Zeit (26 November 1998): 3. Roth, John K., and Elisabeth Maxwell, eds. Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide. Palgrave: Basingstoke and New York, 2001. Sicher, Efraim, ed. Writing and Memory After Auschwitz. Urbana and Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1998. Schwennicke, Christoph. “Historische Berufung.” Süddeutsche Zeitung (10 August 1999): 1. Sznaider, Natan. “Schweben über den Gräbern. Der kommerzialisierte Holocaust: Notizen aus Krakau.” Süddeutsche Zeitung (20 July 1999): 13. Walser, Martin. Deutsche Sorgen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997. ———. Erfahrungen beim Verfassen einer Sonntagsrede. Friedenspreis des deutschen Buchhandels 1998. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1998. Wheatcroft, Geoffrey. “Holocaust chic.” The Guardian (27 January 2000): 20. Winden, Dorothee. “Diepgen gegen Mahnmal.” die tageszeitung (17 August 1998): 4. Winkler, Heinz-August. “Lesarten der Sühne.” Der Spiegel (24 August 1998): 180–81. Wolfrum, Edgar. “Geschichtspolitik in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1949– 1989. Phasen und Kontroversen.” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 45 (1998): 3–16. Wollaston, Isobel. “A War Against Memory? Nativising the Holocaust.” In Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide, ed. John K. Roth and Elisabeth Maxwell. Vol. 3: Memory. Palgrave: Basingstoke and New York, 2001, 501–13.

“Wie kannst du mich lieben?”: “Normalizing” the Relationship between Germans and Jews in the 1990s Films Aimée und Jaguar and Meschugge Stuart Taberner

The Culture of Victimhood

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Jews have been all the rage in Germany. Victor Klemperer’s Tagebücher 1933–1945 (1995) — serialized for television in 1999 — and Ruth Klüger’s weiter leben (1992) are only the two most outstanding examples of the current passion for what Thomas Kraft calls “jüdische Memorienliteratur” (2000: 11). Writer and journalist Maxim Biller is bizarrely popular, despite — or more likely because of — his insistent “Jewishness,” and a renamed Lea Rosh, the raucous television chat-show host, has cemented her celebrity status with her campaign for a Holocaust memorial in Berlin, armed only with a single Jewish grandfather and a prodigious talent for self-promotion. Even Daniel Jonah Goldhagen was acclaimed — above all by younger Germans — during his tour to sell the German translation of his 1996 book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners (see Ullrich 1996). More generally, synagogues are being restored and monuments erected apace. The new Jewish Museum in Berlin, moreover, had been attracting in excess of two 1 hundred thousand visitors before the exhibits had been deposited. Germans are thus absorbed, as Jane Kramer reports, “in an elaborate exercise in ‘solidarity,’ if not identification, with Hitler’s victims” (1995: 49). This extends beyond the “state-ordained philo-Semitism” that Mary Fulbrook sees as typical of the old West Germany (1999: 65), generating the paradoxical “Tabuisierung und Latenz des Antisemitismus” described by Werner Bergmann as late in the history of the FRG as 1990 (116), and it certainly contrasts with the previous indifference, if not hostility, to Jews in the former East. Indeed, the “rediscovery” of their Jewish heritage by prominent GDR figures in 1990 set the tone for the

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decade. Everybody, it seems, is busy tracing their Jewish roots, excavating the Jewish history of their home town, or tracking down evidence of Jewish cultural activity. Jews have also been called upon in the political sphere, notably by Helmut Kohl, who has compared the left’s call for a boycott of his appeal for donations to his Spendenaffäre fine with Kristallnacht. Chieftains of the New Right, moreover, have pointed to Jewish historian Michael Wolffsohn as a German patriot whose work depicts the reconciliation of 2 the two traditions. As if to show that such appropriations are not restricted to the fringes of conservatism, sections of the liberal media acclaimed Ignatz Bubis, President of the Council of Jews in Germany, in similar terms upon his death in 1999 — ironically, Bubis had once accused Wolffsohn of being the “Vorzeigejude der deutschen Rechtsradi3 kalen.” Another target of Bubis’s ire, Martin Walser, had, of course, argued in his 1998 Friedenspreisrede against the instrumentalization of the Holocaust. For Walser, the main casualty of this was the German Kulturnation — a German-Jewish achievement — put asunder by the Allies and banished by a liberal-left elite: “Ich habe gesagt: wer alles als einen Weg sieht, der nur in Auschwitz enden konnte, der macht aus dem deutsch-jüdischen Verhältnis eine Schicksalskatastrophe unter gar allen 4 Umständen” (Walser 1995: 34–35). Walser’s self-quotation — citing his eulogy for the Jewish-German patriot Victor Klemperer (see Taberner 1999) — thus invokes a normalization that would historicize Auschwitz. Normalization, in fact, is the key term. The surge in interest in things Jewish may reflect a post-unification sense that the past has finally passed. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, as Eva Rosenhaft argues, was popular partly because he was “emphatic in acknowledging that postwar Germans have shaken off the anti-Semitic traditions and qualify as good democrats” and because of his “insistence that [prewar Germans] should be regarded as exemplars of a civilization not our own” (1997: 114 and 5 118). For many of today’s “ordinary Germans,” then, sympathy for Jews confirms the undeniable achievements of postwar (Federal) German democracy, a kind of pride that — now the nation is united and its rehabilitation thereby complete — need no longer be inhibited by the taboo on identifying with the victims. Demonstrations of popular solidarity against right-wing extremism and skinheads — for example in the wake of the bomb attack on a Düsseldorf railway station in 2000 in which six Jews were injured — thus chime well with the SPD regime’s promotion of a form of normalization rooted in the new Germany’s internalization of western, Enlightenment values. Indeed, the government has caught the popular mood with its claim that the stability of German democracy,

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and its respect for human rights, now mean that the nation can be trusted, both at home and abroad, to act with confidence and restraint. In 1999, therefore, Joschka Fischer restyled Germany as the savior of Europe’s new Jews, the Kosovo Albanians, simultaneously furthering the SPD-Green government’s own discreet program of German normalization: sovereign states may also wage war. At the same time, however, today’s philo-Semitism may have other implications. Identification with Jews as victims may be less an act of confession and contrition for specific historical events than an internalization of the “culture of victimhood” that became fashionable across western liberal democracies in the 1990s. Sensitivity towards the victimstatus of any number of ethnic groups, people whose sexual orientation had once been seen as deviant, handicapped people, and women, for example, has become the measure of a society’s openness. Concurrent with this development, and perhaps related to it, the Holocaust is now seen as the “original” injustice, a “founding act of prejudice” embodying and radicalizing the evil of discrimination which all victims suffer. It is common, therefore, to compare racism, religious persecution, maltreatment based on gender and sexual orientation, and marginalization of the physically and mentally handicapped to the slaughter of the Jews. As a result, the Holocaust has arguably become the only master-narrative, the only standard which still allows for unfashionable concepts of good and evil in a postmodern age that has done away with grandes histoires. The internalization of the “culture of victimhood” can have various consequences. Hence the prestige that now derives from victim-status, in particular its aura of moral right, encourages ever more groups to seek to claim this standing for themselves — Peter Novick describes this process with reference to the way in which minority groups in the United States have attempted to parallel their suffering with the Holocaust as a means of creating political capital. For Germans, alternatively, identification with Jews may rather respond to a probable sense of being victimized as Germans. In somewhat bizarre fashion, Germans in the present may identify with Jews because of their sense of being pursued for crimes committed by their grandparents more than fifty years ago. This may be encouraged by constant media reporting of the Holocaust and its consequences, for example, the Berlin Holocaust Memorial and restitution for slave and forced laborers. In addition, once the taboo on identifying with victims has been eroded for the grandchildren of the perpetrators, it becomes perhaps psychologically easier to parallel German and Jewish suffering at the time of the Holocaust itself. This process may also have been encouraged by events in the former Yugoslavia. The widespread involvement of “ordi-

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nary” people in the massacres during the Croatian, Bosnian, and Kosovo wars was widely commented on in the German media, with a number of implications. First, and recalling arguments put forward during the Historikerstreit of the mid-1980s, it was now possible to argue that the persecution of the Jews was simply one in a series of pogroms against the “ethnically-other” continuing to the present day. Second, and perhaps still more disturbing, the atrocities in ex-Yugoslavia added to the postEnlightenment gloom concerning human nature: perhaps it was simply part of our makeup to hate people different from us and to act cruelly once set free of civilized restraints. If this is true, then it would surely be unfair to condemn Germans in particular for a general human proclivity for evil. Indeed, and within the culture of victimhood, perpetrators might be regarded as victims of their own human nature. Third, parallels might, of course, be drawn between Bosnia and Auschwitz, yet they could also just as easily be drawn between Bosnia and the killing, expulsion, and rape of Germans in the closing stages of the war and its aftermath. Indeed, Auschwitz, crimes against Germans, and Bosnia might all seem remarkably similar. These notions are encouraged, often unintentionally, by — to give only a few examples — television documentaries of the 1990s on the bombing of German cities, the debate on W. G. Sebald’s Luftkrieg und Literatur (1999), the re-release of Gert Ledig’s 1955 novel Vergeltung (1999), the discussions surrounding the fiftieth anniversary of the firebombing of Dresden, the focus on the expulsions 6 from the East, or, most consciously, the New Right. Such retrospective identification often leads to fetish and melancholia. The first implies the freezing of events at the moment before the trauma of revelation, knowledge, and loss of innocence (the instant before the link between German suffering and German crimes is glimpsed) while the second follows when knowledge can no longer be avoided: the self becomes stuck in the moment of mourning, overidentifies with the lost object, and turns the libido directed towards this loss inwards (see Freud 1957). The Mitscherlichs described this process for the 1950s and 1960s in their Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern (1967). The question is, have the Jews now replaced Hitler as the lost object of affection? The desire to freeze time before the destruction of the German-Jewish symbiosis may well equate to a wish to “normalize” German history. Once knowledge of the Holocaust can be deferred no longer, however, fascination with the Jewish contribution to German culture easily becomes melancholic. German suffering is displaced onto Jewish suffering, a gesture also mandated by the “culture of victimhood.” A sense of self may be generated that is rooted in identification with

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the lost object and a tension between “normality” and the claim to victimstatus. Melancholia, of course, lacks context and prefers sentiment to reason. This version of normalization is most readily associated with neoconservatives such as Martin Walser. Yet it may also reflect a widespread and unreflective feeling among the public at large that Germans have been “victimized” enough for their past sins. Against it is set the understanding of normalization advanced in recent years by key players in the SPD-Green Government, in particular Joschka Fischer. This defines a “self-conscious normality” in which the past is not forgotten or repressed but taken as the starting point for the liberal and democratic self-understanding of the Berlin Republic. In this version nostalgia is kept at bay, as is melancholia and a solely defensive identity, by means of what Bill Niven has called a 7 “reflexive conscience” with regard to the past. In what follows, I discuss two films as examples of these two models of the relationship between normalization and philo-Semitism. Max Färberböck’s Aimée und Jaguar (1998), based on the bestseller by Erica Fischer, depicts a German-Jewish love affair during the Nazi period. The less well-known Meschugge (1999), written by Dani Levy and Maria Schrader, and directed by Levy, focuses upon a German-Jewish relationship in the 1990s. In Färberböck’s film, nostalgia dominates over critical engagement with the past. Levy, on other hand, seems to offer the possibility for a more critical engagement with the tensions between normalization and the past.

Aimée und Jaguar Färberböck’s Aimée und Jaguar directly refers to the context of its production and reception in its opening sequences. A flashback to 1944/45 in which the film’s star, the Jewess Felice Schragenheim, plays with the children of her lover, Lilly Wust, cuts straight to Berlin in the late 1990s. The Nazi past and Schröder’s Berlin Republic are juxtaposed, as photographs of Lilly’s husband in Wehrmacht uniform form the visual backdrop to the voice of the estate agent introducing a new family to Lilly’s apartment overlooking the “Regierungszentrum” and the Chancellor’s offices: “Der Glanz des nächsten Jahrtausends lacht Ihnen, sozusagen, 8 vom Fenster herein.” Immediately, the link between past and present is raised. Does the onset of the Berlin Republic represent a break with the past, a Stunde Null, or does the return to Berlin indicate a different kind of normalization? Are Germans in the 1990s willing to accept the National Socialist legacy as part of the psychological and physical topography of their united nation?

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The following sequences appear to resolve this question. Lilly is bundled off to an old people’s home, a member of a generation that will soon have passed away and whose memories are now of purely historical interest. The young woman who prevents her from fleeing the home thus demands forcefully: “Wo wollen Sie hin — wohin?!” Subsequently, Lilly meets Ilse, the woman who narrates the film, and begins to reminisce. We are made privy to their tale by means of the flashback that makes up the greater part of the film before the present-day Rahmenerzählung returns towards the end to complete — almost — the narrative. Yet we are never more than mere spectators, a 1990s’ audience invited to watch — but not judge — the story of an everyday love affair in extraordinary times. Hence, the audience is predisposed to approach the story of Felice and Lilly as a love story, an episode in the past that is of interest not so much for its Nazi context as for its reworking of the “eternal” themes of forbidden love, nonconformity, and tragic loss. It is a distinctly 1990s’ film, moreover, incorporating that decade’s obsession with sexuality, its marketing of a stylish homosexuality — viz the success of Der bewegte Mann, or, for that matter, any number of American movies — and its adoption of Hollywood techniques. As far as Nazism is concerned, the audience is not encouraged to reflect on a past that intrudes on their present. There is a comfortable distance from a period that is depicted in an uncontroversial fashion and which all viewers can agree to have been horrific and immoral without needing to pause to consider how they might have behaved themselves, the ethical choices faced by characters, or the possibilities available to them for the exercise of conscience. This is historicization as understood, perhaps, by Ernst Nolte: a genuine yet nonpartisan interest in a past that is vergangen, over and done with. Part of this historicization is the creation of sympathy, or at least understanding, for the various “ordinary Germans” depicted in the film. Gestapo thugs and the couple comically ever ready on the stairwell with a Nazi slogan are presented in stereotypical fashion, their dress, mannerisms, and speech marking them out for the audience as the “enemy” of the protagonists’ love. These people, a tiny minority, are the conventional face of Nazi Germany. They are the “historical reality” that the viewers accept as “fact” — and which all decent people will despise. Ranged against them, however, are a number of other characters who invite varying degrees of sympathy. By default, these individuals represent the majority of Germans who were not convinced Nazis. The impression these ordinary Germans convey is of a population trapped by historical circumstances. Some stand out thanks to small acts of kindness.

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Most, however, are Mitläufer, such as Lilly’s soldier-husband who is brutalized by the Russian front and whose enthusiasm for the Endsieg barely disguises his fear, or Felice’s boss, the editor of a Nazi newspaper, whose bombasticism compensates for his lack of self-reliance. Indeed, collusion and conformity come to seem understandable: these characters are victims of their own weakness, lack of constancy, and the extraordinary environment in which they find themselves. The strains upon them are increased by constant Allied air raids that terrorize Germans and Jews in equal measure — the flashback begins with Ilse’s comment: “Seit drei Wochen tobte die Luftschlacht um Berlin” — food shortages, and a dearth of reliable information. Most of all, it is Lilly who epitomizes the “ordinary German.” Her evolving attitude towards Jews is thus of key importance. Here, it is significant that Felice first glimpses Lilly during a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Germans and Jews are united in culture, as they take pleasure in a heritage that is shattered not by the Gestapo, but by an Allied raid. German culture is the real victim of the war, physically as a result of bombing and spiritually insofar as Nazi propaganda disenfranchises Felice: she is recognized as a Jew by a former patient of her father and forced to depend on his benevolent silence. Despite her hurtful exclusion, however, Felice’s attitude towards her Christian Mitbürger is surprisingly forgiving, and, perhaps, influenced more by debates in the 1990s than the realities of the 1940s. During a heated discussion with Ilse — who is jealous of Lilly’s obvious attraction for the woman she wants for herself — Felice insists: “Sie [Lilly] ist nicht besser und nicht schlechter als jede von uns.” Contemporary pessimism regarding human nature — genetic research and the Bosnian war have shaken Enlightenment beliefs in the possibility of exercising conscience — is thus projected backwards. Ordinary Germans are forgiven, or at least excused, and by the very people they persecuted. Equally striking is the defense of conformity offered by Felice for Lilly: “Du verurteilst die Wust, weil sie keine Meinung hat. Ist das schon ein Verbrechen?” The disintegration of left-wing utopias, the relapse into brutality in Europe and the unfashionability of political engagement mean that this comment resonates with present-day audiences. Lilly’s anti-Semitism — “an jeder Bombe sind Juden schuld” — appears, therefore, to be little more than the internalization of the propaganda that surrounds her constantly. It is not “felt,” nor even part of her “natural” make-up, but rather a product of historical circumstances that she is too weak to resist. She is a Nazi not by conviction, but because Hitler’s ideology accords her status and a sense of worth. Weak-willed

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and submissive, her “Mutterkreuz” is the only thing that forces other people to pay her any respect. Ordinary Germans, it would seem — to judge by Lilly, at least — were not so much persuaded of their innate superiority as desperate “to belong.” Indeed, when Lilly’s domineering yet rather pathetic husband discovers his wife’s lesbian affair she runs in delight to her new friends, most of whom, as yet unbeknownst to her, are Jews, and announces, quite inappropriately, that she is one of them. Later, she confesses to Felice that her life has been nothing more than a series of attempts to compensate for her lack of self-reliance by means of blind belief: “Ich habe immer gedacht: wenn ich nur fest daran glaube.” The audience may thus empathize with Lilly: after all, even the Jewess Felice is prepared to excuse her lack of steadfastness. It becomes difficult, therefore, to condemn her for the fact that she never fully glimpses the relationship between Nazism and Allied bombing — unlike the audience, she does not have benefit of the film’s spectacular shots of the Siegessäule set against the burning city — or the fact that she appears not to register the rounding up of Jews. Moreover, any distance that she gains from Nazi propaganda, however small, may count disproportionately to her credit. Felice thus acts as the catalyst for Lilly’s growing, but always limited realization of the reality of what surrounds her: she hands Lilly her glasses in the concert hall at the start of the extended flashback and thus inaugurates the metaphor of “seeing yet not seeing” that runs through the first quarter of the film. Moments of insight, therefore, combine with myopia. She has no need of her glasses when she sees through her lover Ernst, who threatens to report her father for defeatism, yet, moments later, she appears to be blind to the devastation that surrounds her in the street, as well as to the link between this destruction and the Nazi propaganda blaring out from a loudspeaker. Her mother’s echoing call — “wo willst du denn hin?” — predicts the words that will be shouted to her by the young woman in the old people’s home fifty years later, and which we have already heard in the opening sequences. Lilly has never found an answer to this question. She has never been able to transform fleeting insight into understanding, action, or even resistance. Yet we do not condemn her. For us, in truth, she is an old woman, without the benefit of hindsight, who knew no better. Almost at the very end of the film, the time comes when Felice must tell Lilly that she is Jewish. The German woman’s shocked reaction — “wie kannst du mich lieben?” — goes to the heart of the matter. The Holocaust has destroyed the marriage of German and Jewish civilizations, and only an act of forgiveness by Jews can put an end to German guilt and make them “normal” again. Felice forgives Lilly, representative

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of all those Germans too weak, or too selfish, to care about their Jewish neighbors, by responding to her plea: “Felice, verlass mich nicht.” The German, then, begs the Jew not to abandon her to guilt. Felice rushes over to her, and thereby reconfirms the mutual need existing between Germans and Jews. She is welcomed back by a “true German,” that is, one who has recovered from the brief and extraordinary aberration of Nazism, to reestablish the supposedly natural state of affairs that Hitler’s persecution appears to have destroyed. The audience, then, is presented with a contrast between the “rightfulness” of the German-Jewish love affair and the depravity of Nazi brutality. The affection between Lilly and Felice is seen as idyllic, a moment of true affinity that can never be recovered in its original innocence. Given that Auschwitz cannot be “undone,” therefore, two ways of reconstructing the German-Jewish symbiosis are available: one is an engagement with the past that is honest and uncompromising, as well as sympathetic; the other is melancholic, which is artless and imprecise. The close of Aimée und Jaguar contains both of these possibilities, reflecting, perhaps, the manner in which the film incorporates the ambiguity of present-day philo-Semitism. At the end, of course, melancholia wins out. Lilly and Felice return from a day at a Berlin lake. Their mood is elated and their love perfect. The idyll is captured in the photographs they take of one another. These images freeze their happiness at the very moment before its destruction. They provide the basis for a melancholia in which discrete moments of a perfect German-Jewish union are sequestered as photographic stills and removed from the flow of filmic narrative, and thereby taken out of history, context, and the dynamics of complicity. It is a moment of pure fetishization, an insistence on the instant prior to the destruction of innocence that ensues once knowledge inflicts itself upon those who would rather not know. Lilly and Felice return home to the Gestapo. They — and the audience — are forced to see the truth. The German-Jewish idyll was just that: an illusion that ignores cause and context. The destruction of the fallacy that the German-Jewish symbiosis can exist outside of history, that is, as if removed from the context of antiSemitism, or that it can be frozen at the moment before the Holocaust, appears complete as the Gestapo hunt Felice down in Lilly’s apartment building. What is interesting, however, is the film’s subsequent focus. The remainder of the narrative treats not Felice’s fate as a Jew, but Lilly’s efforts to come to terms with her loss. In effect, Aimée und Jaguar is about how Germans choose to memorialize the history of the GermanJewish love affair.

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The mood is set by Lilly’s immediate reaction to Felice’s abduction. The camera zooms in on Lilly — Felice is now absent from the narrative — as she writhes around on the floor, screaming “Nein.” It is an exceptionally long take, an unusually protracted focus on her inability to accept the reality of Felice’s murder. It is also ambiguous: are we to feel sympathy for her, or are we to condemn her for her naiveté? Does this scene encourage an interpretation of Lilly’s literal philo-Semitism as self-indulgent, inward-looking as well as taken out of context? Or does it predict the audience’s sympathy? At first, it would appear that we are to condemn Lilly. The next scenes show Lilly talking to Ilse in 1945, after the war. She reveals that she went to see Felice in Theresienstadt, an admission that provokes Ilse’s rage: Lilly’s visit would have drawn attention to Felice and put her into still more immediate danger. Indeed, Lilly’s major concern is whether or not Felice had continued to sleep with Ilse after the start of her affair with Lilly. She is still blind, it seems, and still unaware of the wider context. This continues to be the case as the film returns to its Rahmenerzählung in the late 1990s. Lilly’s comment to Ilse in the old people’s home — that it is odd that “wir jetzt alle normaler leben müssen” — appears to imply a degree of nostalgia for the war years: for her, they were a time of self-discovery. Normalization is the monotone reality of a Berlin Republic in which neither lesbians nor Jews are taboo: the German Sonderweg may have been destructive, but it was more invigorating, a heady mix of exultation and hubris. It is left to Ilse to note Lilly’s part in this hubris: “Du hast dich betrogen, und sonst keiner.” The closing sequences thus seem to invite condemnation of Lilly. At the close of the film, however, the Rahmenerzählung gives way to a final flashback. Once more, the audience is transported back to 1945. The women are talking and playing cards, another instance of perfect happiness at the moment before its destruction. It is Felice who dominates the scene: Schrader renders her character as proud, beautiful, and full of life, and yet also as characteristically ephemeral. The pathos is heightened by the audience’s knowledge of the fate Felice is to suffer, and by her defiant yet futile insistence that life is worth living if only for moments such as these. Lilly takes a photograph of Felice, thus attempting to freeze time at the instant before the end of their love. The Jewish woman becomes a fetish-object, not only for Lilly but also for the audience, as the photograph is reproduced on the big screen. A clichéd image of Jewish vivacity and exquisite emotional fragility is offered up as a loss to be mourned. If the audience cannot repress knowledge of the destruction of the German-Jewish symbiosis, it can at least identify with the missing half. As Anna Parkinson argues in an argument that applies a similar

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concept of melancholia to Aimée und Jaguar in more depth than is possible here, Lilly thus embodies a “second-order affect of sentimentality” (2001: 154). The audience identifies with Lilly’s adopted victimhood, “cannibalized,” Parkinson suggests, from Felice’s suffering (161), in a manner that “short-circuits the critical space of the viewer” (154). It is difficult not to empathize with Lilly’s affection for Felice in the closing flashback of Aimée und Jaguar. Her blindness is relativized once more. In the 1940s, it is suggested, she was naive, weak, and easily influenced. In the 1990s, she is a relic of a past that has finally passed, an inmate of an old people’s home, a historical curiosity, not an individual to be judged. The implication, therefore, is that normalization means judging the past less harshly, historicizing it, and responding to it sensitively rather than according to inflexible political and moral precepts. This could not be faulted were it not for the implication that Lilly is quite separate from the Germans in the audience, that the Berlin Republic somehow represents an absolute caesura. In fact, the notion of caesura itself implies an instance of fetish, that is, the desire to displace the traumatic experience of one historical moment by substituting it with another, magnificently guiltless event — German unification which seemed to draw a line under the past. This fetish may, however, also degenerate into melancholia. The ebbing away of the massive euphoria of unification, the disappointments of a new epoch in which “wir jetzt alle normaler leben müssen,” and a continued defensiveness about identity in a period in which the idea of the nation is still being challenged — not so much by the specter of the past than by multiculturalism, mass immigration, and globalization — all these may encourage anxiety and retrenchment. In such cases, it is easy to identify oneself as a victim, and to project this elsewhere, perhaps as a melancholic identification with the most unassailable victims of all: the Jews.

A Self-Reflexive Conscience: Meschugge If Aimée und Jaguar deals with the past, Dani Levy’s Meschugge explores the possibility of love between Germans and Jews in the present, after Auschwitz. It tells the story of Lena, a German Jew living in New York, whose mother arrives unexpectedly to meet the mother of the man who is to become Lena’s lover, the American Jew David. Lena and David meet at the hospital after Lena finds David’s mother dead in the same hotel that her mother had just left without warning. In the course of the investigations undertaken by Kaminski, private detective and one-time Mossad agent, it emerges that Lena’s mother is not in fact Jewish. Her

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father, Lena’s grandfather, had been an officer in Treblinka and, in 1945, had stolen the identity of a Jewish family acquainted with his own that he thought had been wiped out. Lena’s mother had come to New York to meet the sole surviving member of this family, David’s mother, whom she had hidden during the war and whose identity she had adopted after 1945. Her journey to the United States, undertaken after the global publicity surrounding an arson attack on her father’s factory in Germany attracts the unwanted attention of David’s mother, ends with the accidental killing of the Jew by the childhood friend — and savior — who had taken her identity. Normalization is again the key issue at stake. The film begins with shots of the firebombing of the factory owned by Lena’s fake Jewish grandfather. Subsequent scenes describe the excited reactions in the international press, and the reception of these reports amongst the Jewish community in New York — Germany is still judged by its treatment of Jews. The probable reference here to real incidents of anti-Semitism in the early 1990s makes these sequences plausible, and the question asked by a reporter of Lena — whether she, as a Jew, could imagine living in Germany — perhaps crystallizes the dilemma. Normality depends upon Germans and Jews finding a way to live side by side once more. As in Aimée und Jaguar, the German-Jewish symbiosis finds metaphorical expression in a photograph. This time, however, the possibility of fetish and melancholia is preempted. The photograph of Lena’s mother and her childhood friend, the Jewish girl who later became David’s mother, is thus torn down the middle. Germany may well be incomplete without Jews, yet even if the two parts of the image were reunited the ragged edges of the tear would remain, preventing easy identifications or fake innocence. Lena’s love affair with David, which begins as an attraction between two Jews in America, is thus transformed into a love affair between a Jew whose family had been victims of the Nazis and a German whose relatives were complicit. The scene of the action, almost inevitably, shifts to Germany as Lena and David seek the truth about their families’ intertwined histories, an endeavor that is exploited by Kaminski, a disheveled Jewish version of a Raymond Chandler detective. Kaminski fakes his own death and again adopts his role as Mossad Nazi hunter. By means of this and other deceptions, he leads Lena to discover the truth about her family. In the end, Lena’s mother kills herself, and the grandfather is exposed, significantly with the approval and assistance of Lena, who succeeds in breaking her attachment to the Nazi criminal. The representative of the third generation thus manages to make the emotional break

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with the past of which her mother’s generation was never quite capable — and this despite the rhetoric of 1968, the antiauthoritarian commitment, and the endless volumes of Väterliteratur. The philo-Semitism of the generation of Germans who were born between the late 1920s and the late 1940s, and who grew up in the Federal Republic, may have offered a way of not having to identify too closely with their parents. For their parents’ generation, it may have been a means of diverting attention from complicity, as with Lena’s grandfather. In any case, identification with Jews in general is indicted as much as the state-led philo-Semitism of the FRG in its early years when Adenauer pursued a dual policy of restitution to Israel and the re-engagement of Nazi civil servants (Frei 1996), the ritual gestures towards Jewish sensitivities from the 1960s onwards, or the sentimental identification with victims in the 1990s. Yet it is not the case that a more honest engagement with the past comes easily to Lena and David. Both are aware of the instant attraction between them. This is a mutual fascination that operates as a metaphor for the interconnectedness of German and Jewish fates: fate in the sense of destiny, of course (“Nichts passiert einfach so,” David mutters when he first meets Lena, a sentiment that she later reiterates: “Es ist ein Gefühl, als ob es vorher be9 stimmt war, daß wir uns treffen” ), and fate in the alternative sense that the German-Jewish love affair is fated: history will always intervene to shatter the idyll. At the same time, the third generation has sealed itself off from this past. Lena works in New York as a set designer for advertising campaigns. David, for his part, has abandoned the Orthodox Judaism of his family, is addicted to his mobile phone, and merely indulges his mother’s attempts to discover the truth of her past. Both, in fact, are firmly anchored in the 1990s. Their identity is fixed, or so they believe, and it rests on a comfortable abhorrence of a past in which good and evil are easily defined. Thus, they attempt to ignore the past: “Du weißt doch gar nichts über mich,” Lena protests, provoking David’s naive response: “Das ist mir egal.” This screening out of the past, or, rather, this attitude to the past that places people and events into simplistic moral categories, is an artificial form of normalization that depends on a superficial understanding of personal and national history rooted in sentimentality rather than critical engagement. It is only when they travel to Germany that they begin to discover their shared history. Subsequently, they are able to develop their love. The attraction between German and Jew defies the present-day norms of both communities in the wake of the Holocaust, even as it accords with the historical record of assimilation, intermarriage, and creative symbiosis. To an extent, therefore, Lena and David’s mutual attraction contains an element of the uncanny — the anxiety arising from

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the re-emergence of something previously familiar but now repressed (see Freud 1985). For David’s family and friends, it is thus not possible to be German and Jewish. The inevitable Jewish Kupplerin notices Lena’s “Schickse-Nase,” and asks: “Sie sind Deutsche?” a question swiftly succeeded by its corollary: “Sie sind keine Jüdin.” This comment recognizes a historical reality: there are very few German Jews left after the Holocaust. Yet it also points to the atrophied identity of both sides resulting from the repression of their historical connection. The lesson of the Holocaust for Jews was that assimilation provides no protection. This is an attitude that destines them to live in a time-warp, turned in upon themselves and cut off from the world. We might even wonder whether the fact that David’s brother has Down’s syndrome suggests a rather clumsy effort by the filmmakers to suggest the risk of a lack of long-term viability. For Germans, of course, the Holocaust results in a similar threat to their identity, and a similar turning in upon themselves. It is up to Lena and David to “normalize” the idea that Jews can also be Germans, while Germans can also be Jews, and that they might love one another. This requires them to overcome a taboo. David thus relates the parable of a dog who wants to get to the other side of a lake, but is not allowed to swim or go around the water: “Er schwimmt trotzdem.” In fact, it seems, a stable identity can only be achieved by both German and Jew once their “unhistorical” alienation from one another ceases. David thus begins to pray again, and Lena divests herself of her Star of David, unable to continue the deception imposed upon her by her family. In this way, fake identifications are avoided and the past accepted. At the close of the film, they are reunited at the house of Lena’s grandfather and watch as the police arrest him — now the German state will act to punish crimes against humanity rather than repress them as it did for much of the history of FRG. Thus, it is implied, the new Germany might well succeed where the country failed in the past. A re-established German-Jewish symbiosis might be a paradigm of multiculturalism, in which ethnic and religious minorities will stress their differences rather than being pushed into a fake assimilation. The state would support this by applying universalist precepts of civil rights, equality before the law, and the prosecution of crimes against humanity. Dani Levy’s Meschugge is, in many ways, overly optimistic, given to melodrama and implausible love affairs in the best tradition of the Hollywood detective and thriller genres. As with Aimée und Jaguar — and much of recent German film — the clear model is Hollywood, a further indication of a normalization along western lines. This may be the implication of the close of Meschugge, which is perhaps deliberately emotion-

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ally unsatisfying: the grandfather avoids prison on medical grounds. This is part of living in a “normal” liberal democracy. The guilty are not always punished, precisely because they have the same access to basic rights as everybody else. This notwithstanding, at least it appears that questions of responsibility are felt to be matters of public debate. Unlike Aimée und Jaguar, however, Meschugge does not avoid difficult issues, nor does it lapse into melancholic identification. Both films support Bill Niven’s assertion that Vergangenheitsbewältigung in the 1990s progressed “beyond the investigation of the repressive political, ideological, and military structures of Nazism to an exploration of the scope for individual maneuver and, accordingly, the function and importance of conscience” — but only Meschugge begins to develop what Niven defines as a “reflexive conscience,” that is, a conscience that is “both outward-looking and inward-looking, backward-looking and forward-looking, critical and self-critical” (2000: 10). This was what was effectively called for by another winner of the Friedenspreis, Israeli writer Amos Oz, speaking six years before Walser in 1992: European civilization and Jewish civilization were married for a long time. The marriage was destroyed by an evil crime. But there were offspring from this union. . . . These genes are not only ghosts — they contain a common ground for mutual creativity in the future. I won’t use the term “normalization.” What I am hoping for is an intensification of the dialogue — including the pain, the horror, and the unrequited love. (1994: 67)

It may be, as Oz suggests, that normalization is not the appropriate word since it perhaps suggests an erasure of the past and of the traumas of the past. Instead, it must be possible for Germans to develop a healthy identity, aware of past crimes, conscious of the loss of the Jewish contribution to German culture, but resistant to overidentification with the victims and to melancholia. Self-confidence can surely coexist with critical self-reflection. “Normal” may not describe this identity, but if normal implies a lack of self-conscious engagement with a nation’s past, including both its achievements and its injustices, perhaps abnormality is to be preferred — and not only for Germany.

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Notes 1

See SPIEGEL ONLINE at http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,86896, 00.html (27 July 2000). For a discussion of the debates Libeskind’s innovative design caused, see Young 2000: 152–83.

2

For a description of Wolffsohn’s proximity to New Right thinkers Ulrich Schacht, Heino Schwilk, and Rainer Zitelmann, see http://www.fes.de/fulltext/historiker/ 00024003.htm (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung). 3

See http://www.comlink.de/cl-hh/m.blumentritt/agr48.htm. Walser had previously been critical of a form of philo-Semitism that he saw as a weapon of the left-liberal elite and the media for the suppression of nationally minded intellectuals such as himself (see Taberner 2001). 4

5

Some on the left, however, saw Goldhagen’s book as a timely antidote to a conservative agenda of normalization (e.g., Berghahn 1996; Heer 1996).

6

For a useful guide to the New Right, and to the attitudes of New Right historians towards Nazism and German suffering, see Berger (1997). 7

I am grateful to Dr. Niven for allowing me to see the text of his paper “Martin Walser: The Aggressive Conscience,” given at the Leeds conference “Taking Stock: Germany 2000” in 2000. Parts of this paper have since been published in Niven’s recent book (see particularly Niven 2002: 189–93). 8

All quotations from the film were taken from the video copy of Aimée und Jaguar. Munich: Universum Film GmbH & Co. KG, 1999. 9

All quotations from the film were taken from the video copy of Meschugge. Frankfurt am Main: Twentieth Century Fox, 1999.

Works Cited Berger, Stefan. The Search for Normality. Oxford: Berghahn, 1997. Berghahn, Volker. “The Road to Extermination.” The New York Times (14 April 1996). Bergmann, Werner. “Sind die Deutschen antisemitisch? Meinungsumfragen von 1946–1987 in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.” In Antisemitismus in der politischen Kultur nach 1945, ed. Werner Bergmann and Rainer Erb. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1990, 108–30. Frei, Norbert. Vergangenheitspolitik: Die Anfänge der Bundesrepublik und die NS-Vergangenheit. C. H. Beck: Munich, 1996. Freud, Sigmund. “Mourning and Melancholia.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey. Vol. 14. London: Hogarth, 1957, 239–58. ———. “The Uncanny.” In The Pelican Freud Library, ed. Angela Richards and Albert Dickson. Vol. 14: Art and Literature, trans. James Strachey. London: Penguin, 1985, 339–46.

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Fulbrook, Mary. German National Identity after the Holocaust. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999. Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Knopf, 1996. Heer, Hannes. “Die große Tautologie.” die tageszeitung (4 September 1996). Klemperer, Victor. Tagebücher 1933–1945. Berlin: Aufbau, 1995. Klüger, Ruth. weiter leben. Eine Jugend. Göttingen: Wallstein, 1992. Kraft, Thomas. Aufgerissen. Zur Literatur der 90er. Munich: Piper, 2000. Kramer, Jane. “The Politics of Memory.” The New Yorker (14 August 1995): 48–65. Ledig, Gert. Vergeltung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999. Mitscherlich, Alexander, and Margarete Mitscherlich. Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern. Grundlagen kollektiven Verhaltens. Munich: Piper, 1967. Niven, Bill. Facing the Nazi Past. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. ———. “Martin Walser: The Aggressive Conscience.” Paper presented to the Leeds Conference, “Taking Stock: Germany 2000,” 2000. Novick, Peter. The Holocaust in American Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Oz, Amos. “Peace and Love and Compromise.” In Israel, Palestine and Peace. London: Vintage, 1994, 65–77. Parkinson, Anna. “Of Death, Kitsch, and Melancholia. Aimée und Jaguar: ‘Eine Liebesgeschichte, Berlin 1943’ or ‘Eine Liebe größer als der Tod.’” In German Culture and the Uncomfortable Past, ed. Helmut Schmitz. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001, 143–63. Rosenhaft, Eva. “Facing up to the Past — Again? Crimes of the Wehrmacht.” Debatte 5:1 (1997): 105–18. Sebald, W. G. Luftkrieg und Literatur. Munich and Vienna: Hansa 1999. Taberner, Stuart. “The Final Taboo? Martin Walser’s Critique of Philosemitism in Ohne Einander.” Seminar 37:2 (2001): 154–66. ———. “‘Wie schön wäre Deutschland, wenn man sich noch als Deutscher fühlen und mit Stolz als Deutscher fühlen könnte’: Martin Walser’s Reception of Victor Klemperer’s Tagebücher 1933–1945 in Das Prinzip Genauigkeit and Die Verteidigung der Kindheit.” Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift 73 (1999): 710–32. Ullrich, Volker. “Daniel J. Goldhagen in Deutschland: Die Buchtournee wurde zum Triumphzug.” Die Zeit (13 September 1996). Young, James. At Memory’s Edge. New Haven and Yale: Yale UP, 2000. Walser, Martin. Das Prinzip Genauigkeit. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995. Wolffsohn, Michael. Meine Juden — Eure Juden. Munich: Piper, 1997.

Models of the Intellectual in Contemporary France and Germany: Silence and Communication John Marks

Intellectuals and Philosophers in Postwar France and Germany

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of this essay relates to the ways in which French and German intellectuals in the postwar era have conceived of their own role and mode of activity in strikingly contrasting ways, particularly with regard to issues of communication and the public sphere. In very general terms, the most influential German model, theorized most lucidly and practiced most assiduously by Jürgen Habermas, has been that of the intellectual as a crucial and enabling stimulus to the construction of a public sphere in which citizens might develop an active and intersubjective discussion about political ends. In contrast, the most influential French model, less explicitly theorized as a way of acting, but implicit throughout the work of the generation of thinkers who came to prominence in the late 1950s and 1960s, has been that of the intellectual as a skeptical but ever-hopeful transmitter of ideas and concepts, sending out messages in a bottle or firing arrows in the hope that another “thinker” will find something useful in these messages. This opposition can be articulated in several ways. Most obviously, it is a consequence of the different preoccupations of French and German intellectuals in the postwar era. That is to say, German intellectuals, certainly up to the point of unification, have been concerned with the legacy of the Third Reich. French intellectuals, on the other hand, have tended to work on a series of issues relating to apparently more general problems such as discourse, power, and desire. The German intellectual and cultural landscape has, partly for these reasons, given a certain prominence to sociological and literary figures, whereas the French scene has been primarily philosophical in orientation, with literature exploring HE MAIN ARGUMENT

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philosophical themes such as the “death” of the author. According to even cruder shorthand definitions, prominent German intellectuals, such as Habermas and Grass, have been primarily humanist in orientation, rejecting the antihumanism of Nietzsche and Heidegger, whereas French intellectuals after Sartre, such as Foucault and Deleuze, reject humanism. While this thumbnail sketch inevitably fails to convey the nuances and internal tensions of French and German intellectual activity in the postwar era, it is undeniable that the two communities have by and large failed to engage in any consistent and fruitful form of exchange in this period. Here, I will argue that this lack of dialogue stems in part from the particular way in which intellectuals within the two national contexts conceive of communication and the construction of an intellectual community. A series of contrasts between French and German intellectuals’ preoccupations flow from this issue of communication: resistance versus reconstruction; revolution versus reform; the singular, or the “specific,” versus the universal; the “public” versus the “private” thinker; and silence versus communication. I will look at the way in which Habermas in Germany, and Deleuze in France might be seen as paradigmatic of these oppositions. I will also consider some of the issues that emerge from the so-called “Sloterdijk affair” in relation to these questions. Sloterdijk’s Regeln für den Menschenpark (1999) represents, for one thing, a further episode in the limited series of intellectual exchanges, and mutual antagonisms, between French and German thinkers that had been occasioned by Heidegger’s Brief über den Humanismus (1976). Moreover, Sloterdijk’s provocative invocation of Nietzsche and Heidegger represents a general challenge laid down to German culture to reconsider postwar intellectual taboos. Sloterdijk’s intervention seeks to reopen issues relating to interpretations of humanism, and in this way, also alludes to the tension between silence and communication. Finally, taking the Sloterdijk affair as one example, I will consider briefly the possibility that French and German intellectuals may be in the process of reassessing the mutual suspicion that has led to an era of isolation, and therefore the further possibility that, in intellectual terms, national boundaries might be in the process of breaking down. Some brief methodological justifications are required at this point. First, although the essay will refer to a number of intellectuals in France and Germany in the postwar era, the central contrast to be explored is between Gilles Deleuze and Jürgen Habermas. If, as both Max Pensky (1999) and Jan-Werner Müller (2000) have suggested, Habermas has been remarkably consistent in his commitment to, and elaboration of, the notion of the “public” intellectual, then Deleuze has been equally as

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consistent in his advocacy of the “private” thinker. Second, much useful work has been done on the genealogy and definition of the “intellectual” as a species, usually taking the Dreyfus affair in France as a starting point. While I draw on that work as a general background, I do not intend to add anything of any significance to such definitions of the intellectual. Rather than considering how and why certain individuals become identified as intellectuals, I focus on some of the preoccupations that have permeated the work of French and German intellectuals in the postwar period. In other words, the essay is not a full-fledged sociological consideration of the figure of the intellectual in these two national contexts: it is a consideration of how certain primarily philosophical themes have impacted upon the self-conception and activity of intellectuals. It is however, worth bearing in mind one factor of a sociopolitical nature that has had an important impact on the construction of the intellectual in France and Germany: that is to say, the relationship of intellectuals to the state. Sudhir Hazareesingh, for example, argues that the relationship between French intellectuals and the state since 1945 has been one of “interpenetration” (Hazareesingh: 1994: 46). Sunil Khilnani, in a similar vein, shows how French intellectuals in the immediate postwar period are seen as having an important role to play in continuing the discourse of nation and revolution that emerges as a way of legitimizing and rebuilding French political identity (Khilnani 1993). By means of frequently close links with the Communist Party they are an important part of a sort of officially recognized “counter-state.” The intellectual is a crucial actor after 1945 in connecting the language of resistance to a paradoxically universalist language of nationalism (Khilnani 1993: 30). In short, the figure of the French intellectual plays an important role in the reconstruction of the French nation and state, without being discredited by a prior accommodation with the state. German intellectuals in the postwar era, on the other hand, react in large part to the fact that the Enlightenment in Germany produced the philosophy professor rather than the philosophe (Osborne 1996: x). For various reasons, this meant that German academic philosophy forged a special relationship with the nation and the state. Therefore, prominent German intellectuals such as Habermas after 1945 tend to reject any form of participation in the state. Habermas insists that philosophers cannot be “teachers of the nation,” they can only join in the democratic process as citizens (Habermas 1986: 199). In other words, the intellectual’s role is divided between philosophy and a public role of assistance and facilitation. To sum up, the figure of the intellectual in France is by no means discredited by the war, and is instead associated with the core

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values of the “revolutionary Republic,” whereas German intellectuals, having only the previous model of the discredited philosophy professor, were forced to reinvent themselves after 1945.

Habermas: Mandarins and Public Intellectuals In Another Country: German Intellectuals, Unification and National Identity, Jan-Werner Müller locates the intellectual foundations of the Federal Republic in the late 1950s and early 1960s. For Müller, the two most influential figures who emerge during this foundational period are Jürgen Habermas and Günter Grass (Müller 2000: 37). Taking their cue from Theodor Adorno, while reacting against his cultural pessimism, leftwing intellectuals like Grass and Habermas took as their starting point the need to deal with Germany’s past. The fact that Germany was a “belated nation” that had been taken down a “special path” meant that the postwar left-wing intellectual had to be alert to continuities with the errors of the past, while reorientating Germany and reintegrating the nation into the Enlightenment traditions of the West (Müller 2000: 38). For Habermas, one of the primary roles of the intellectual is that of structuring and supporting the necessary democratic tool of a public sphere to which citizens have access, and which has as much independence as possible from the state and the leveling tendencies of the media. In an address delivered on the fiftieth anniversary of the Nazi surrender, published in his collection of political writings Die Normalität einer Berliner Republik, Habermas provides a fairly comprehensive summary of the task of democratic reconstruction that needed to be undertaken in the post-1945 era (Habermas 1995: 167–88). Germany had to reorientate itself towards the “West,” and citizens had to be convinced of the normative substance of the political traditions developed in the West and persuaded to rediscover the “muted” legacy of Enlightenment and humanism in their own traditions. It was necessary to construct a new public sphere in the shape of a “free and combative political culture.” Ideally, the public sphere provides a space for “domination-free” discourse and a forum for public reasoning among citizens. This ongoing process would be one of the cornerstones of a “constitutional patriotism,” which would avoid the dangers of more irrational and essentialist versions of nationalism. In another piece from the same collection, Habermas emphasizes the fact that, if the public sphere is to produce genuine productive power, it must promote an “unimpaired subjectivity” that avoids processes of massification and demagogy. The public sphere should allow the public to start “moving”:

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Wenn ein Publikum in Bewegung gerät, marschiert es nicht, sondern bietet das Schauspiel anarchisch entfesselter kommunikativer Freiheiten. In den zugleich dezentrierten und porösen Öffentlichkeitsstrukturen können die verstreuten kritischen Potentiale zusammengeführt, aktiviert and gebündelt werden. (Habermas 1995: 149)

As Max Pensky has argued, Habermas’s conception of the role of the public intellectual in postwar Germany develops out of a strong anxiety relating to the persistence of the “mandarin” mentality in German political and intellectual life (1999: 218–22). Pensky claims that this “antidemocratic, antimodern and reactionary professorate,” which asserted itself as a conservative elite and self-appointed guardian of national culture from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, was a highly significant factor in the particular development Germany’s intellectual and political culture. The “mandarins” were instrumental in establishing an opposition between the positive value of Geist, the notion of a rooted, authentic, particularist, and mystical national tradition, and the negative value of Intellekt, whereby the intellectual and the Jew became inextricably linked as antinationalist forces (218). Pensky goes on to show that Habermas’s desire to invent a new model for the German intellectual was sharpened by his realization, as a student in the 1950s, that an influential core group of academic philosophers who espoused these mandarin values still exerted an important influence in the immediate postwar 1 period (218–19). For Habermas, these anti-Enlightenment philosophers represented a residue of antidemocratic values that looked back to prewar notions of German particularism and destiny. The four main figures who recur in Habermas’s writing with reference to the continuation of the mandarin tradition are Heidegger, Schmitt, Jünger, and Gehlen. They represent the danger of the return of the “past as future,” as Habermas puts it, which is to say the return of an irrational, anti-Enlightenment, premodern tradition. Habermas sees Schmitt and Heidegger as “spiritually united” in their intellectually elitist disdain for the Enlightenment values of democracy, the public sphere, emancipation, and egalitarianism (1995: 113). Habermas’s opposition to these “Four Horsemen” is a crucial element of the general distinction that Jan-Werner Müller draws between two intellectual cultures in postwar Germany (2000: 31). On one hand, there was something like an official public culture of coming to terms with the past, a culture of guilt and democratic humanism. The influence of Karl Jaspers was crucial here in emphasizing the importance of communication. On the other hand, intellectuals such as Heidegger represented a sort of “counterculture” of antihumanism and a more or less

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complex mixture of victimhood, shame, and silence. Evidence of the importance of this opposition can be seen in the first philosophical article that Hannah Arendt published in the United States after the war. In “What is Existenz-philosophy?” she rejects Heidegger’s ontology of Dasein in favor of a philosophy of communication inspired by Jaspers: “in the concept of communication there lies embedded, though not fully developed, a new concept of humanity as the condition for man’s Existenz” (1956: 56). Habermas himself demonstrates the importance of this opposition between communication and silence in an interview with Le Monde in 1993, talking about Adorno (1995: 65). He emphasizes that Heidegger and Adorno should not be talked about “in the same breath.” Adorno did subscribe, Habermas acknowledges, to a general and comprehensive historical perspective of decline, but he was not an opponent of the Enlightenment. He was “sufficiently inconsistent” to engage in a program of “popular education” in the postwar years: “Trotz seines theoretischen Pessimismus hat er sich gegenüber dem größeren Publikum geradezu volkspädogogisch verhalten” (65). Habermas’s essay “Carl Schmitt in der politischen Geistesgeschichte der Bundesrepublik” (a review of Dirk van Laak’s Gespräche in der Sicherheit des Schweigens) is at pains to emphasize the self-consciously “private” and subversive nature of the network that sustains Schmitt’s influence in the early years of the Federal Republic. The fact that Schmitt refused to undergo any process of de-Nazification may have meant that he was excluded from university life, but an informal network was quickly established in order to disseminate his ideas: Die Wege zum “amtsverdrängten” Kollaborateur des “Dritten Reiches” führten deshalb nur über die Schwelle des Privathauses in Plettenberg, über informelle Gesprächsrunden und Freundeskreise, über abgelegene Kolloquien und Tagungen, die für den Meister veranstaltet wurden. Die Barrieren waren höher, aber die Kontakte enger und die Gespräche intensiver. (114)

It seems that, for Habermas, the way in which Schmitt communicates his ideas and exerts an influence is as distasteful as the ideas themselves. The vaguely conspiratorial and “initiatory” aura of this network is plainly opposed to Habermas’s notion of an open public sphere. He portrays Schmitt as a shadowy figure in the intellectual climate of the Federal Republic, exploiting a network of contacts in order to prey upon a constituency of gifted but impressionable students (117). The theme of the clandestine and the conspiratorial is strikingly captured when Habermas

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highlights Hanno Kesting’s desire that Schmitt might be “a secret Prince” in the “invisible Reich” of the German Spirit (119). The official “silence” of figures like Schmitt and Heidegger, Habermas contends, masks a clandestine, underground dissemination of their ideas, and the fact that their activities are carried out away from the transparency of the public sphere is in itself suspicious.

Deleuze: Public Professors and Private Thinkers In an interview from the late 1980s Gilles Deleuze is asked about the “silence” of intellectuals in France after 1968. His detailed reply constitutes a summary of his conception of the function of the intellectual (Deleuze 1995: 152–54). For Deleuze, the setting up of a “communicative intersubjectivity” does not represent a philosophical advance. Consensus, he claims, in terms reminiscent of Heidegger, has nothing to do with philosophy, concerned as it is with the realm of “opinion.” This drive towards consensus does not pay enough attention to what Deleuze calls “becomings,” processes that are potentially revolutionary and transformative but that are not adequately accounted for by the construction of new “universals.” It is important, he says, to focus on everything that is legally problematic, rather than on codified and established constitutional rights. The way to construct rights, as far as Deleuze is concerned, is by means of “jurisprudence,” by working through “singularities,” rather than establishing general constitutional principles. If intellectuals become too involved in the process of “public” debate on general principles they are forced to “take a position,” to act out a sort of ritual combat for the benefit of television cameras. The possibility exists for communication to take place, but it cannot be in the public forum provided by the media: People talk about intellectuals abdicating their responsibility, but how are they supposed to express themselves in some all-purpose medium that’s an offense to all thinking? I think there’s a public for philosophy and ways of reaching it, but it’s a clandestine sort of thinking, a sort of nomadic thinking. The only form of communication one can envisage as perfectly adapted to the modern world is Adorno’s model of a message in a bottle, or the Nietzschean model of an arrow shot by one thinker and picked up by another. (153–54)

So, for Deleuze, the communication of ideas does not have to be mediated by the public sphere. It is perfectly acceptable for ideas and concepts to be transmitted “by hand,” as it were, via a highly restricted network of individuals.

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However, Deleuze is careful to point out that this conception of communication does not entail an elitist view of the intellectual, but rather emphasizes the drive toward impersonality which should characterize the work of the intellectual. In an interview from 1986 Deleuze aligns himself with Foucault’s notion of the “specific” intellectual (Deleuze 1995: 87–88). In the 1970s Foucault began to argue that the proper role for the intellectual was no longer that of the “universal” conscience inaugurated by Zola and his famous intervention in the Dreyfus affair. It was now necessary for the intellectual to be “specific” — that is to say, no longer a spokesperson for universal values, but rather an individual who lends expertise to particular situations. Doctors, for example, no longer have the right to speak on behalf of their patients, but have a duty to speak as doctors about a range of problems — political, legal, ecological, etc. — which impinge upon their area of expertise (88). To a certain extent, the notion of the “specific” intellectual remains undertheorized by Deleuze and Foucault, but the general point emerges that the specific intellectual should be involved in the construction of “transversal,” multivocal groups, in which no one individual speaks on behalf of others. Deleuze proposes as examples The Prison Information Group, set up by Foucault and Daniel Defert, and a similar AIDS group set up by Defert at a later date. The aim of these groups was to organize support, information, and struggle in a “transversal” manner. It is a question, Deleuze says, of identifying the impersonal physical and mental forces that one confronts when engaging in any form of struggle. It is notable that Deleuze’s language hints at a Heideggerian heritage: “Being itself is in this sense political” (88). In a much-cited dialogue between Foucault and Deleuze from the early 1970s, Deleuze emphasizes the point that the intellectual must work outside of the norms of representation. The “theorizing intellectual,” as Deleuze puts it, is no longer a representing or representative consciousness, and those who engage in political action are no longer represented by an organization that speaks on their behalf: “Representation no longer exists; there’s only action — theoretical action and practical action which serve as relays and form networks” (Foucault 1977: 206–7). Closely linked to the notion of the specific intellectual is Deleuze’s formulation of the “private thinker” as opposed to the “public professor.” In a little-known piece from 1964, occasioned by Sartre’s refusal of the Nobel Prize, he deals at some length with the notion that Sartre is an exemplary “private” thinker (Deleuze 2002: 109–13). The model for the private thinker is, unsurprisingly, Nietzsche, and such thinkers have two main characteristics: a particular sort of solitude that remains with

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them in all circumstances, but also a sort of permanent agitation or disorder that, equally, always accompanies them. They “represent” no identifiable constituency or set of principles, speaking in their own name, not in order to refine a literary personality or style, but rather to locate presences or powers that are as yet unrepresentable. Sartre’s opposition to the norms of representation constitutes for Deleuze a mode of resistance. Sartre arrived as a new and vital voice after the war, according to Deleuze, by virtue of his desire to speak as “a man like any other,” to shift philosophy from the sphere of judgment and representation to a more liberating “sub-representational” sphere (110–11). In a period that Deleuze finds to be stultifyingly conformist, Sartre seems to stand for the hope that thought might rediscover the potential to be both “private” and “collective” (112). It is, of course, striking that Deleuze seeks to incorporate Sartre, conventionally seen as perhaps the ultimate example of the publicly engaged intellectual, into the slightly different tradition of the “private” thinker. This apparent paradox of the simultaneously private and collective — the ideal of a sort of plural, populous, and multivocal solitude — lies at the heart of Deleuze’s conception of intellectual activity, and constitutes an important tendency in postwar French intellectual life. Deleuze remains committed, throughout his career, to an ideal of “philosophy,” and in one of his final works he and Félix Guattari seek to answer the question What is Philosophy? It is perhaps best, they claim, to say what philosophy is not: it is not contemplation, reflection, or communication, but rather the construction of concepts that might facilitate these “passions” (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 6). It is of no concern to philosophy that somebody has a particular view on a subject, it is rather a question of establishing the problems at stake in order to create concepts to deal with the “undiscussable problem” (28). Deleuze and Guattari constantly emphasize the importance of construction and creativity as the essentially philosophical activity, which they suggest is not part of any schema of “communicative rationality.” Deleuze’s conception of the intellectual as a sort of “mediator,” someone who acts as a point of transmission or who provides concepts for others to work with, is directly related to his philosophical preoccupation with what he calls “preindividual” singularities. Rather than being an individual who maintains and expresses a certain position, the intellectual should act as a point of interruption, transmission, or resistance.

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Communication and Silence Deleuze’s fairly diffuse definition of the role of the intellectual is perhaps somewhat more coherent if it is considered in terms of a problematics of silence and communication. The intellectual needs to communicate, but in order to communicate the intellectual must be allowed the privilege of “silence.” This can mean several things: the right not to have to make judgments; the right to resist public opinion; the right to communicate with a highly restricted audience of fellow philosophers; and the ability to merge one’s own voice with the voices of others. Two recent publications in the field of intellectual history, Eleanor Kaufman’s The Delirium of Praise (2001) and Anson Rabinbach’s In the Shadow of Catastrophe (1997), have dealt directly with the question of silence and communication for postwar intellectuals in France and Germany respectively. Kaufman provides a reading of the “laudatory” philosophical essays written by a group of French intellectuals — Deleuze, Foucault, Bataille, Blanchot, and Klossowski — between the 1940s and the 1980s. She argues that this form of essay, usually written by one thinker in order to praise another’s work, serves as an exemplary medium for the consideration of forms of communication or modes of being that are often viewed as inferior or unworthy of attention: “chatter, silence, sickness, imbalance, and the absence of work among others” (Kaufman 2001: 2). This body of work is animated in part by the possibility of “desubjectification,” the breakdown of identity. Rather than engaging in a critical dialectic, these writers are concerned with praise and affirmation. They pursue a mode of exegesis — as opposed to criticism — that produces the effect of a delirium signaling “the ecstatic breakdown of identity that occurs when it is no longer discernible what thoughts belong to whom and whose voice is being heard at any given moment” (7). In other words, these thinkers explore the possibility of a mode of thought that, as Deleuze claims of Sartre’s work, is both private and collective. Blanchot, for example, develops Montaigne’s view that friendship, in the philosophical sense, is singular and rare. He sees the fleeting moment of friendship as something like a community of silent reading, a form of “nocturnal” communication, that does not avow itself as communication. It may be a case of two individuals silently reading each other’s work, but the “event” of friendship is plural and impersonal (44–45). The quality of silence is linked, then, to impersonality, and gives expression to a sort of collective utterance. Silence does not literally mean the absence of discourse, and it can be an important attribute of a thinker who also has a strong public presence. Blanchot, for example, remarks that even though

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Foucault published a great deal and was known for his roles as an engaged public intellectual and a teacher, he was also a “silent being.” For one thing, he would refuse to explain himself to interviewers who tried to force him down a particular path (50). Moreover, his work in general was inspired by a suspicion of the drive to explain the self that is one of the dominant tendencies of modernity. We are constantly encouraged to confess and talk about ourselves, under the guise of values such as selffulfillment, whereas this incitement to talk is actually constraining and normalizing. Deleuze makes a similar point when he talks about the “infantile” nature, the “petty cruelty,” as he puts it, of the contemporary media. The problem is not, he claims, getting people to talk, but rather providing “little gaps of solitude and silence” in which they might find something they really need to say: “What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying” (1995: 129). Ultimately, this mode of “silence,” which is so important for French postwar thinkers, cuts across conventional oppositions between public and private spheres, seeking to construct a sphere that is collective but not subject to the constraints of public opinion. It might initially appear to be the case that issues of silence and communication were more clearly delineated for postwar German intellectuals. As we have already seen, Jan-Werner Müller distinguishes between an official culture of communication and a “counterculture” of silence, and Anson Rabinbach sees this opposition in terms of the political choices made by Jaspers and Heidegger. The fact that Heidegger chose silence, while Jaspers sought to communicate as often as possible with a broad public, was politically highly significant (Rabinbach 1997: 131). Heidegger’s partly selfimposed “silence” after the war can be viewed as a political statement, in that it was symptomatic of a general stance of silence and “shame” on the part of the conservative intellectual counterculture. Müller diagnoses this stance as both a general commitment to mandarin values of tact, distance, and integrity — a suspicion of the demands made by public pedagogy to “confess” or “convert” — along with an attachment to the idea of a particular German destiny, and indignation about claims of collective guilt (Müller 2000: 30). Heidegger’s commitment to silence can also be viewed as part of the elaborate construction of a philosophical means of self2 deception and evasion. That is to say, silence comes to be associated in some way with the receptivity to Being which takes humankind beyond the constraints and errors of “humanism.” The errors of humanism come to be associated with instrumental uses of language, and allowing oneself to be claimed by Being means running the risk of seldom having much to say.

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Rabinbach’s painstaking intellectual history of Jaspers’s Die Schuldfrage (1946) and Heidegger’s Brief über den Humanismus (1976) examines this opposition, but also goes some way toward problematizing it. Certainly, for Jaspers and Arendt, Heidegger confirmed the dangers inherent in the ideal of the “noncommunicative” philosopher, whose scorn of the public realm contributed in large part to his support for the Nazis. Heidegger’s Brief über den Humanismus refused the public acknowledgment of responsibility and sought to reject a “Western” metaphysics of opinion and technology, whereas Jaspers’s Die Schuldfrage sought to promote communication as the most important mode of philosophical participation (Rabinbach 1997: 152). However, Rabinbach also shows that Jaspers himself, although he was directly involved in the identification of Heidegger as a “dangerous intellectual” by the occupying authorities, could never quite bring himself to engage in public debate with Heidegger. According to Rabinbach, this reluctance was partly the result of a mandarin suspicion of public controversy, but also partly the result of a particular view of philosophy on Jaspers’s part. Running counter to his advocacy of an engaged, public role for the intellectual, Jaspers privately wondered whether criticism and polemics had any real place in philosophy, or whether philosophy actually called for a poetic stance of “silent acceptance” (157). The implication is that philosophy and communication cannot be equated: true polemic presumes communication in the public sphere, whereas philosophical discourse can only take place in private (157). These themes of “silence” and “privacy” have been associated with other German intellectuals who have sought to challenge the primacy of the public sphere. Martin Walser, for example, after his so-called “national turn” in the 1970s, talks in terms of intellectuals accumulating das Verschwiegene, a private samisdat that cannot be publicly articulated (Müller 2000: 165). Aesthetically, these issues feed into a discussion of representation in Walser’s work. Even in the 1960s, Walser was expressing doubts over the possibility of the writer providing unmediated meaning in the public sphere. Instead, the writer should expose his own fragmented, insecure self (157). When he begins to focus increasingly on German national concerns in the late 1970s, he argues that it is legitimate for a sense of the nation to be preserved in the private realm, away from the public sphere. He opposes the language of private feeling, a means of authentic self-expression, to public discourse and political realism (163–64). Poetry and inwardness are the necessary antidotes to the “entertainment industry” of the public sphere (173). In short, Walser seems to conceive of his responsibilities as an intellectual along the predominantly “French” lines of the “private” thinker, as outlined above.

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It is, therefore, no surprise that he has been described as the “Proust” of West German literature, and also “Foucault from Lake Constance” (Müller 2000: 152). He sees himself, as Deleuze sees Sartre, as an intellectual who resists the pressure to conform to certain norms of representation and expression. For Müller, Walser is merely offering another version of the opposition between a private, authentic Innerlichkeit and a hypocritical and dogmatic public, a strand of German thought that runs through pietism and Heidegger (168). However, it may also be justifiable to see Walser as a precursor of a more general move towards new conceptions of silence and communication that are an important part of the intellectual life of the Berlin Republic.

Brief über den Humanismus and Regeln für den Menschenpark Heidegger’s Brief über den Humanismus is a crucial, prismatic text through which to view the related issues of silence, communication, commitment, language, and subjectivity. It also represents a moment at which the French and German intellectual traditions diverged drastically immediately after the war. It is no surprise that, as Rabinbach points out, the text has been reinterpreted and reread in several ways since its publication: as an intervention in the debate around existentialism in the late 1940s; as a key text of deconstruction and poststructuralism in the 1960s; as a crucial statement in the so-called “Heidegger affair” of the late 1980s: and, most recently, as a reference point in the “Sloterdijk affair.” Regeln für den Menschenpark (1999), written as a “reply” to Heidegger’s original “letter,” presents Sloterdijk’s critique of what he sees as the exhausted tradition of humanism or rather “national humanism,” as he provocatively calls it. The “reply” is structured around two themes: a Nietzschean-Foucauldian assertion that the pedagogic aims of the Enlightenment, a “national-humanist” tradition, have been accompanied by a rather more sinister drive towards disciplinary techniques (the “Domestikationsgeheimnis” of humanism); and a somewhat more elusive development of Heidegger’s treatment of language and Being, which constitutes an implied critique of communicative rationality, and contains suggestions for new approaches to the problems associated with biotechnology. Sloterdijk asks whether a consideration of language and Being along Heideggerian lines might not permit new approaches in the culture of reading and “friendship,” which have been interpreted so narrowly in the national-humanistic era:

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Also eine neue Befreundungstechnik? Eine alternative Post? Eine andere Art, Einverstandene und Mitnachdenkliche um ein ins Weite gesandtes Schriftstück zu versammeln. Ein anderer Humanisierungsversuch? Ein anderer Gesellschaftsvertrag zwischen Trägern einer unbehausten, nicht mehr nationalhumanistischen Nachdenklichkeit? (1999: 21)

Following on from Nietzsche, Sloterdijk wants to take the “Züchtungsmonopole” away from teachers and priests in order to clear the way for new concepts that might inform new “Züchtungsprogramme” (40). It might be necessary, he suggests, to acknowledge that humanity is faced with challenges that cannot be fully understood or analyzed in the context of the values of transparency and self-understanding prevalent in the national humanist legacy. It may even be that these values are illusory, and that the act of reading and finding “friends” for philosophy requires an attention to silence and opacity. In short, it is clear that Sloterdijk is effectively revisiting issues around silence and communication. For Éric Alliez, writing in a French context, the debates around Sloterdijk’s Regeln für den Menschenpark are closely related to the so3 called Habermas-Foucault controversy of the 1980s, and to issues around communication. Alliez considers Habermas to be the key philosophical figure in postwar Germany, and rather dismissively refers to him as the main voice of the “hypermoral” conscience by means of which Germany attempted to come to terms with Nazism. According to Alliez, Habermas, as a reaction to Heidegger’s tainted ontology, “reduces” philosophy to a theory of communication. Alliez, a student of Deleuze, regards communication as philosophically unproductive.

European Intellectuals Alliez may see in Sloterdijk’s recent work the possibility of “un échange transrhénan,” but this would inevitably be on French terms. For a broader conception of a new model of the intellectual, which would no longer be limited by the weight of national traditions, one might look to Pierre Bourdieu. As a postscript to his work on Flaubert as an intellectual, The Rules of Art (1996: 339–48), Bourdieu produces the prototype for a manifesto of a new type of intellectual “For a Corporatism of the Universal.” This postscript constitutes a call to think in terms of a new Internationale of intellectuals. He argues that intellectuals are “paradoxical beings” who are always caught between the poles of autonomy and commitment, and pure culture and politics. In fact, intellectuals are constituted in and through their overcoming of this opposition, in their desire for autonomy. Obstacles are constantly placed in the way of this

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search for autonomy, and different national contexts create variable relations between the intellectual field and political power. However, Bourdieu urges intellectuals to focus on the constants that are masked by these local variables. It is perfectly possible for the same intention of autonomy to be expressed in “opposite position-takings” according to the national context in which the intellectual works: Intellectuals of different countries must be fully conscious of this mechanism if they want to avoid letting themselves be divided by conjunctural and epiphenomenal oppositions which stem from the fact that the same will to emancipate runs up against different obstacles. Here I could take the example of the most visible French philosophers and German philosophers (including Foucault and Habermas) who, since they pit the same concern for autonomy against contrasting historical traditions, seem to oppose each other with apparently inverse relations with truth and reason. (343)

Intellectuals from different European countries must learn, Bourdieu says, to recognize and decipher in the statements of intellectuals from other nations the effects of geographical or historical distance from, for example, Nazism, Stalinism, or complex events such as in 1968. In a piece written for the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Bourdieu reiterates this commitment to a genuinely European intellectual exchange that would emphasize the continuities lying behind national inflections and preoccupations. In this piece, entitled “Vive le Streit,” which appeared on the occasion of Habermas’s seventieth birthday, Bourdieu acknowledges that the particular histories of France and Germany separated the two intellectual cultures after 1945: Die politischen Probleme, mit denen sich 1945 ein 16jähriger Deutscher konfrontiert sah, waren nicht die unseren, wozu besonders das Verhältnis zur nationalsozialistischen Vergangenheit gehört, die einem gelegentlich auch in Gestalt von Lehrern oder Kollegen entgegentrat. So wurde in Frankreich der Aufbau einer Demokratie oder später die Wiedervereinigung nie im selben Maße als Drama oder Bedrängnis empfunden, wie dies in Deutschland der Fall war. (Bourdieu 1999: 17)

However, despite these differences Bourdieu feels that European intellectuals can and must work together to create a European “public sphere.” To be an intellectual means that one has the ambition to “be universal,” but it is also necessary to “objectify and master” the unconscious historical inheritance that separates intellectuals from different countries. Bourdieu’s call for a corporation of intellectuals comes from an overly sociological perspective, which means that, although he quite

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rightly emphasizes the importance of self-reflexively taking into account national contexts, he downplays the philosophical stakes involved in different national traditions. It is perhaps more reasonable to look for signs of genuine exchange and dialogue between French and German thinkers at the level of ideas. Just as French intellectuals might benefit from a more nuanced consideration of the public sphere, so German intellectuals might benefit from a climate of intellectual debate no longer so intimately tied to Germany’s recent past. Sloterdijk, for example, feels that the debate around Regeln für den Menschenpark could only be constrained by “German sensitivities” in its early stages: Es ist doch klar, daß die von mir mehr angedeuteten als ausgeführten Hinweise einen Realitätsgehalt haben, den man nicht länger verdrängen kann. In der Affaire wurde diese Verdrängung aufgehoben. Das bedeutete für uns den Anschluß an den internationalen Stand der Kunst. Aus einem lokalen Mißverständnis ist schließlich etwas geworden, was man in Frankreich einen débat national nennen würde. Für unsere Verhältnisse war das ein Quantensprung in Diskussionskultur. (2001: 58).

Notes 1

For a full discussion on the subject of the German “mandarins” see Habermas (1981).

2

This is largely the view of Rockmore in Heidegger and French Philosophy (1995).

3

For a comprehensive discussion of this debate, along with a useful collection of key texts by Habermas and Foucault, see Kelly (1994).

Works Cited Alliez, Éric. “La pensée verrouillée.” Le Monde des Débats 8 (1999): 9. Arendt, Hannah. “What is Existenz Philosophy?” Partisan Review 13:1 (1946): 34–56. Bourdieu, Pierre. The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Trans. Susan Emanuel. Cambridge: Polity, 1996. ———. “Vive le Streit!” Süddeutsche Zeitung (18 June 1999): 17. Deleuze, Gilles. L’île déserte et autres textes: textes et entretiens 1953–74. Paris: Minuit, 2002. ———. Negotiations: 1972–1990. Trans. Martin Joughin. New York: Columbia UP, 1995. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. What is Philosophy? Trans. Graham Burchell and Hugh Tomlinson. London: Verso, 1994.

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Foucault, Michel. Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Trans. Donald Bouchard and Sherry Simon. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1977. Habermas, Jürgen. “Life-Forms, Morality and the Task of the Philosopher.” In Autonomy and Solidarity: Interviews with Jürgen Habermas, ed. Peter Dews. London: Verso, 1986. ———. Die Normalität einer Berliner Republik: Kleine Politische Schriften VIII. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995. ———. Philosophisch-politische Profile. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981. Hazareesingh, Sudhir. Political Traditions in Modern France. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994. Heidegger, Martin. “Brief über den Humanismus.” In Wegmarken (Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 9). Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1976. Jaspers, Karl. Die Schuldfrage. Zurich: Artemis, 1946. Kaufman, Eleanor. The Delirium of Praise: Bataille, Blanchot, Deleuze, Foucault, Klossowski. Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins UP, 2001. Kelly, Michael, ed. Critique and Power: Recasting the Foucault/Habermas Debate. Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 1994. Khilnani, Sunil. Arguing Revolution: The Intellectual Left in Postwar France. London: Yale UP, 1993. Müller, Jan-Werner. Another Country: German Intellectuals, Unification and National Identity. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2000. Osborne, Peter. “Introduction: Philosophy, and the Role of Intellectuals.” In A Critical Sense: Interviews with Intellectuals, ed. Peter Osborne London: Routledge, 1996, vii–xxvii. Pensky, Max. “Jürgen Habermas and the Antinomies of the Intellectual.” In Habermas: A Critical Reader, ed. Peter Dews. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999, 211– 37. Rabinbach, Anson. In the Shadow of Catastrophe: German Intellectuals between Apocalypse and Enlightenment. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: U of California P, 1997. Rockmore, Tom. Heidegger and French Philosophy: Humanism, Antihumanism and Being. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. Sloterdijk, Peter. Regeln für den Menschenpark: ein Antwortschreiben zu Heideggers Brief über den Humanismus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999. Sloterdijk, Peter, and Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs. Die Sonne und der Tod: Dialogische Untersuchungen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001.

Contributors DAVID BASKER is Senior Lecturer in the Department of German at University of Wales, Swansea. His publications include Chaos, Control and Consistency: The Narrative Vision of Wolfgang Koeppen (1993) and edited volumes on Uwe Timm and Hermann Peter Piwitt. He is coordinator of the Centre for Contemporary German Literature in Swansea. CHARMIAN BRINSON is the Director of the Humanities Programme and Reader in German Studies at Imperial College London. She is also a member of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies (Institute of Germanic Studies, London) and has published widely on German-speaking exiles in Britain. CAROLINE GAY is a Ph.D. student at the Institute for German Studies in Birmingham. Her research focuses on the legacy of the National Socialist past in the political culture of the “Berlin Republic.” In 2000 she completed an M.Phil. entitled “Reshaping the Myth: National Memory Management, Vergangenheitsbewältigung and the Dialectic of Normality in Post-war West Germany.” HANS-JOACHIM HAHN is Professor of German at Oxford Brookes University. His recent publications include German Thought and Culture (1995), Education and Society in Germany (1998), The 1848 Revolutions in German-speaking Europe (2001), and articles on the Romantic period, the role of the intellectual in Germany, comparative studies of East and West German literature, and the Gruppe 47. JIM JORDAN is Principal Lecturer in German at The Nottingham Trent University. He has written widely on the author Ernst Toller, publishing an edition of Toller’s poetry in 2001 (Previously Unpublished Poems of German Playwright Ernst Toller 1983–1939). His current research interests include intercultural literature in contemporary Germany. JOHN MARKS is Reader in French Studies at the Nottingham Trent University. His publications include Gilles Deleuze: Vitalism and Multiplicity (1998), and the co-edited volume Deleuze and Literature (2000).

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WILLIAM NIVEN is Reader in German at The Nottingham Trent University. His books include The Reception of Friedrich Hebbel in the Era of National Socialism (1984); (with JKA Thomaneck) Dividing and Uniting Germany (2001); and Facing the Nazi Past (2002). He is currently preparing a book on the literary reception of Buchenwald. STUART PARKES is emeritus professor from the University of Sunderland. He is the author of Writers and Politics in West Germany (1986) and Understanding Contemporary Germany (1997). He is currently working on a new volume dealing with the political role of writers in Germany. DAVID ROBB is lecturer in German Studies at Queen’s University of Belfast and a former professional singer/songwriter. His publications include Zwei Clowns im Lande des verlorenen Lachens. Das Liedertheater Wenzel & Mensching (1998). He is currently working on a history of protest song in Germany. GISELA SHAW is Professor of German at the University of the West of England Bristol, England. Her publications include (as co-editor) Autobiography by Women in German (2000) and Women in the World’s Legal Professions (2002). STUART TABERNER is Lecturer in German at the University of Leeds. He has published on Martin Walser, Günter Grass, Hans-Ulrich Treichel and other contemporary authors. He is currently working on a book on German Literature in the age of normalization. FRITZ WEFELMEYER is Reader in German at the University of Sunderland. With Helmut Brackert, he is editor of Naturplan und Verfallskritik. Zu Begriff und Geschichte der Kultur (1984). His research interests encompass modern German literary and cultural studies, and he is currently editing with Stuart Parkes a volume on Martin Walser. REINHARD K. ZACHAU is Professor of German at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. His publications include a monograph on Stefan Heym, studies on Hans Fallada and Heinrich Böll, and the American edition of Jakob Littner’s Holocaust memoir, “Journey Through the Night.” ULRIKE ZITZLSPERGER is Lecturer in German within the School of Modern Languages at Exeter University. Her research interests focus particularly on aspects of contemporary Berlin: its culture and literature, architecture, and town planning. She has also written on the figure of the “Narr” in the literature of the Early Modern period.

Index Abusch, Alexander, 51, 127 Adelung, Johann Christoph, 27 Adenauer, Konrad, 58, 60, 98, 103, 202, 239 Adorno, Theodor, 16, 34, 115–16, 214, 218, 248, 250 Akademie der Künste (East Berlin), 143, 146, 158–59, 192 All-German Writers’ Congress (1947), 170–71 Allied occupation zones (1945– 1949), 6–8, 54, 96–97, 105, 126 Alliez, Éric, 258 Anacker, Heinrich, 93 Andersch, Alfred, 7–8, 47, 95–98, 102, 105 Andersch, Alfred, works by: Kirschen der Freiheit, 7 Anderson, John, 65, 83 Anderson, Sascha, 1 Andres, Stefan, 8, 96 anti-Semitism, 5, 18–19, 49, 216, 218, 228, 233, 238 Apitz, Bruno, 6 Apitz, Bruno, works by: Nackt unter Wölfen, 6 Arminius, 46 Arnason, Johann, 23 Assmann, Jan, 204, 219 Auden, W. H., 156 Auer, Annemarie, 7 Augstein, Rudolf, 58, 213 Auschwitz. See holocaust Austria, 3, 6, 48, 64, 66–67, 69– 70, 74–75, 83, 122, 219, 264 Bahr, Hermann, 30

Bahro, Rudolf, works by: Die Alternative, 138 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 116–17, 151 Balkan War, 210, 229–30, 233 Bartsch, Kurt, 137 Basic Law (West German Grundgesetz), 48, 208, 216 Bataille, Georges, 254 Baumgarten, Hermann, 30 BDM (Bund deutscher Mädel), 110 Becher, Johannes R., 125, 148, 158 Becker, Jurek, 137 Belgium, 63 Bell, Daniel, 23–24 Benjamin, Walter, 33–34, 147, 152–53, 156–57 Benn, Gottfried, 5, 47, 117, 119 Bergengruen, Werner, 96 Bergengruen, Werner, works by: Der Großtyrann und das Gericht, 94 Berlin, 12–14, 26, 31–32, 46, 57, 92, 99, 105, 129, 137–38, 143, 146–47, 150, 165, 167– 170, 174–75, 177–78, 185–98, 201–23, 228, 231, 233, 235, 237, 248, 264 Berlin Republic, 13, 201–23, 231, 236, 257, 264 Berlin Wall, 9, 53, 132, 179, 216 Beuys, Josef, 23 Beyme, Klaus von, 58–59 Biermann, Wolf, 1, 9, 132, 134, 148–52, 154, 157 Biermann Affair (1976), 9, 53, 136–37, 145, 164

266 E

INDEX

Biller, Maxim, 227 Bismarck, Otto von, 48, 118, 120 Bitterfeld Conference (GDR) 9, 130–31 Blanchot, Maurice, 254–55 Bland, Sir Nevile, 65 Bloch, Ernst, 34, 130, 182 Blunck, Hans Friedrich, 91 Blut- und Bodenliteratur, 93–94, 197 Böll, Heinrich, 1, 8, 55, 98, 133, 264 Boer War, 203 Bohrer, Karl Heinz, 17–18 bombing of Germany, 6, 15, 17, 108, 111–12, 119, 203, 230, 233–34, 238 book-burning (1933), 5, 92, 105, 206 Borchard, Ruth, 66, 68–69, 80, 82–83, 86 Braun, Volker, 144, 152, 164, 173, 181–82, 188 Braun, Volker, works by: Unvollendete Geschichte, 135 Brecht, Bertolt, 8, 51, 115, 125– 26, 128–29, 132, 143, 147–48, 150–52, 158 Brecht, Bertolt, works by: Badener Lehrstück, 148–49; Kampflieder, 144, 149 Bredel, Willy, 125 Broder, Henryk, 211–13, 220–21 Bruck, Moeller van den, 49 Brussig, Thomas, 190 Brussig, Thomas, works by: Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee, 3–4; Helden wie wir, 3–4 Bubis, Ignatz, 228 Buchenwald (concentration camp), 3, 6, 116, 168, 209, 264 Burckhardt, Jakob, 4, 24, 27–28, 36–38, 117–18, 121–22 Burmeister, Brigitte, 12, 166, 169–70, 178, 181–82

Burmeiser, Brigitte, works by: Anders oder vom Aufenthalt in der Fremde, 169, 178; Unter dem Namen Norma, 12, 165, 178–80 Carossa, Hans, 96 Cassirer, Ernst, 34 CDU (Christlich-Demokratische Partei), 45, 55, 105, 201, 204, 218 Celan, Paul, 132 Celan, Paul, works by: Todesfuge, 108 Christo, 13, 189 Churchill, Winston, 112 Cicero, 29 Cold War, 14, 18, 89, 97, 107, 126–27 Croatia, 58, 230 Cruickshank, Dame Joanna, 67–68, 70, 72–74, 76, 78, 80– 81, 85 cummings, e. e., 103 Czechoslovakia, 63, 67, 75, 126 Dachau (artists’ movement), 25 Darwin, Charles, 37 de Bruyn, Günter, 138 DEFA (East German Film Company), 9 Defert, Daniel, 252 de Gaulle, Charles, 43 Deleuze, Gilles, 16, 246–47, 251–55, 257–58, 264 Delius, Friedrich Christian, works by: Die Flatterzunge, 191 Denmark, 63 Derrida, Jacques, 117 Deutsche Akademie der Dichtung, 91 Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, 205–6 Deutsche Studentenschaft, 5, 92 Diamant, Dora, 72

INDEX

Diepgen, Eberhard, 207 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 35–37 Döblin, Alfred, 8, 91, 189, 197 Dresden. See bombing of Germany Dreyfus Affair (France), 247, 252 Dufhues, Hermann-Josef, 45, 105 Dunant, Henri, 117–18, 120, 122 Dwinger, Edwin Erich, 93 Eich, Günter, 7, 57, 94–95 Eichhorn, J. G., 27 Eisenman, Peter, 13, 206–7, 220– 21 Eisenstein, Serge, films by: Battleship Potemkin, 50 Eisler, Hanns, 143, 148–51 Eleventh Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the SED, 9–10, 53, 130, 132–34 Empire, Second, 5, 45–48, 166 Endler, Adolf, 137 Engelmann, Bernd, 56 Engels, Friedrich, 155 Enlightenment, the, 25, 27, 38, 147, 228, 230, 247–50, 257 Enzensberger, Hans Magnus, 5, 56 Enzensberger, Hans Magnus, works by: “Macht und Geist: Ein deutsches Indianerspiel,” 45–46, 56–58 Erb, Elke, 165 Erhard, Ludwig, 45 Eucken, Rudolf, 30 Everding, August, 112–14, 123 Expressionism, 5, 93, 126 Färberböck, Max, films by: Aimée und Jaguar, 14–15, 231–38, 240–42 FDJ (Freie Deutsche Jugend), 75, 86, 143–44, 146, 158, 169 FDP (Freie Demokratische Partei), 19

E 267

Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), 1–2, 6–9, 11–14, 45, 48–49, 51, 54–59, 74, 94–105, 108, 126, 129–30, 132, 135– 36, 138–39, 164–68, 170, 172, 175–76, 180–81, 207, 215, 223, 228, 239–40, 248, 250, 257, 264 Feuchtwanger, Lion, 125 Finkelstein, Norman, 201–2, 218 First World War, 4, 5, 11, 30, 35, 38, 46, 60, 64, 89, 120, 147 Fischer, Erica, 231 Fischer, Joschka, 210, 229, 231 Flake, Otto, 115, 117–18, 120, 123 Flaubert, Gustave, 258 Fleisser, Marieluise, 7, 95 Fontane, Theodor, 111–12, 115– 20, 122–23, 197 Forte, Dieter, works by: Der Junge mit den blutigen Schuhen, 17–18 Foster, Norman, 209 Foucault, Michel, 16, 115, 246, 252, 254–55, 257–60 France, 8, 6, 16, 29–31, 43–44, 46–47, 50, 58, 63, 103, 107, 153, 169, 179, 245–60 Freier Deutscher Kulturbund, 74–75 French revolution, 29, 44, 179 Freud, Sigmund, 5, 230, 240 Friedman, Michel, 19, 216, 223 Fuchs, Jürgen, 138 Fühmann, Franz, 152, 164 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 28 Gehlen, Arnold, 249 George, Stefan, 99 German Democratic Republic (GDR), 1–2, 4, 6, 8–12, 17, 46–47, 51–54, 56–57, 59, 80, 89, 108, 125–40, 143–59, 163–82, 190, 227

268 E

INDEX

Gerz, Jochen, 220–21 “Gesicht zeigen” (campaign against neo-Nazism), 216, 223 Gleichschaltung, 89, 91, 98, 104 Goebbels, Josef, 5, 91–92, 97, 101, 105, 115, 204 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 2, 6, 26–27, 30, 37, 43, 148, 158, 173 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, works by: Faust, 103; Die Leiden des jungen Werther, 135 Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah, 222 Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah, works by: Hitler’s Willing Executioners, 14, 228, 242 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 138 Gorky, Maxim, 126 Grass, Günter, 1, 49, 55–56, 90, 98, 108, 111, 116, 246, 248, 264 Grass, Günter, works by: Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke, 60; Die Blechtrommel, 8, 108–10; Im Krebsgang, 17–18 Great Britain, 3, 6, 30, 63–86, 97, 105, 112, 119, 203, 205, 264 Greiner, Ulrich, 2–3, 11 Green Party, 12, 166, 203, 219, 229, 231 Greser, Achim, 204 Grillparzer, Franz, 48, 59–60 Grosz, Georg, 147 Grotewohl, Otto, 125 Grimm, Hans, 93 Gruppe 47, 1, 7–8, 45, 51, 55, 57–58, 97–98, 103, 105, 107–8, 264 Gstrein, Norbert, works by: Die englischen Jahre, 6 Guattari, Félix, 253 Haacke, Hans, 14, 188–89

Habermas, Jürgen, 16–18, 24, 32, 34, 38, 212, 218, 246–51, 258–59 Haeckel, Theodor, 37 Halbwachs, Maurice, 123, 202, 219 Harich, Wolfgang, 9, 52, 130, 172 Havemann, Florian, 150, 152 Havemann, Robert, 132, 138, 150 Heartfield, John, 147, 150 Hegel, Goerg Wilhelm Friedrich, 27, 38, 118, 121–22, 155 Hehn, Victor, 27 Heidegger, Martin, 16, 47, 103, 246, 249–52, 255, 257, 260 Heidegger, Martin, works by: Brief über den Humanismus, 246, 256–57 Hein, Christoph, 9, 11, 138 Hein, Christoph, works by: Das Napoleon-Spiel, 11; Randow, 11; Willenbrock, 11 Heine, Heinrich, 148, 156, 197 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 25–27, 30, 33, 37 Hermannsdenkmal (Detmold), 46 Hermlin, Stephan, 172 Herzog, Roman, 214, 222 Heß, Rudolf, 105 Hesse, Hermann, 50 Heym, Stefan, 9–11, 126–40, 264 Heym, Stefan, works by: Ahasver, 138–39; Der bittere Lorbeer, 126; The Cannibals, 127; Collin, 137–38; The Crusaders, 126–27; The Eyes of Reason, 127; 5 Tage im Juni, 129, 136; Goldsborough, 129; Die Kannibalen und andere Erzählungen, 127; Der König David Bericht, 132, 134–36, 138; Lassalle, 134–35; Nachruf, 139; Schatten und Licht, 130;

INDEX

Die Schmähschrift, 135; Tom Sawyer’s großes Abenteuer, 129 Hiroshima, 108 Historikerstreit, 201, 218, 230 Hitler, Adolf, 1, 4, 14–15, 49, 53, 63, 90, 92–93, 97–99, 112, 118–19, 166, 204–6, 212, 214, 222, 227, 230, 233, 235 Hitler-Stalin Pact, 80 Hochhuth, Rolf, 8, 107–8 Hochhuth, Rolf, works by: Effis Nacht, 8, 107, 109, 111– 23; Hebammen, 119–20; Die Juristen, 115; Lysistrate und die Nato, 115; Die Soldaten, 115; Der Stellvertreter, 8, 108, 115 Höhne, Anna Catharina, 2 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 148, 173 Holländer, Friedrich, 147 Holland, 63, 65–66, 99–100 Holloway (interned Germans), 64–66, 81 Holocaust, 15, 18, 59, 108–9, 120, 122, 168, 201–2, 205–10, 212–15, 217–22, 228–30, 234–35, 237, 239–40, 264 Holocaust Memorial (Berlin), 13–15, 59–60, 201, 203, 206–9, 211–13, 215, 220–22, 228–29 Holz, Arno, 32 Honecker, Erich, 10, 53, 133–37 Horkheimer, Max, 34 Huch, Ricarda, 91 Huchel, Peter, 94–95, 132 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 29 Hungary (1956 uprising), 52, 130 Independent Labour Party (Britain), 64–65, 76 inner emigration (under Nazism), 3, 5, 7–8, 51, 93–96, 98–99, 100, 104 Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund, 74 Irving, David (trial), 202

E 269

Isle of Man Internment Camp, 6, 64–86 Jackob-Marcks, Christine, 220 Jäckel, Eberhard, 13, 220 Jakobs, Karl-Heinz, works by: Beschreibung eines Sommers, 135 Janka, Walter, 9, 52, 60, 130, 172 Janstein, Elisabeth von, 64, 83 Jaspers, Karl, 211, 249–50, 255– 56 Jean Paul, 173 Johst, Hanns, 5, 91, 93 Joyce, James, 126 Jüdisches Museum (Berlin), 14, 227 Jünger, Ernst, 51, 103, 249 Jünger, Ernst, works by: Auf den Marmorklippen, 94 Just, Gustav, 130 Kachold, Gabriele, 165 Kästner, Erich, 5, 116, 158 Kafka, Franz, 72, 127, 132 Kafka, Franz, works by: Der Verschollene, 46 Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur, 5, 92, 105 Kant, Hermann, 1 Kant, Hermann, works by: Die Aula, 135 Kant, Immanuel, 26–30, 37, 179 Kant, Immanuel, works by: Kritik der Urteilskraft, 37 Karl August, Duke, 2 Karls Enkel (Liedertheater), 10–11, 143–59 Karsten-Heye, Uwe, 222 Kautksy, Karl, 5 Kirsch, Sarah, 165 Kleist, Heinrich von, works by: Michael Kohlhaas, 103 Klemperer, Victor, 227–28 Klopfleisch, Margarete, 74, 85 Klossowski, Pierre, 254

270 E

INDEX

Klüger, Ruth, works by: weiter leben, 227 Koenen, Emmy, 70, 74–75, 78, 80, 85 Königsdorf, Helga, 12, 165–67, 171, 178, 181 Königsdorf, Helga, works by: Gleich neben Afrika, 12, 165, 172–77, 179 Koeppen, Wolfgang, 1, 7–8, 47, 90, 98–105, 263 Koeppen, Wolfgang, works by: Aufzeichnungen aus einem Erdloch, 102; Eine unglückliche Liebe, 99–101; Die Mauer schwankt, 99–101, 103–4; Romanisches Café, 102; Tauben im Gras, 102; Der Tod in Rom, 102–3; Das Treibhaus, 54, 102–3 Kogon, Eugen, 116 Kohl, Helmut, 43, 56, 204, 207– 9, 221, 228 Kolbe, Uwe, 144, 157 Kolbenhoff, Walter, 95–96 Kollwitz, Käthe, 46 Korean War, 127 Kowalski, Jörg, 144 KPD (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands), 2, 6, 49, 74–75, 77–78, 80, 92–93, 98 Kracauer, Siegfried, 34 Kramer, Jane, 206, 227 Krawczyk, Stephan, 157 Kristeva, Julia, 116 Krug, Manfred, 138 Kuby, Erich, 97 Kulturbund zur demokratischen Erneuerung Deutschlands (East Germany), 54, 97, 125, 158 Lange-Müller, Katja, 165 Laurent, Livia, 65, 79–80, 82, 86 Leander, Zarah, 72, 151 Ledig, Gert, works by: Vergeltung, 17, 230

Leeder, Karen, 143, 145, 152–53, 155, 157–59 “Leitkultur” debate (2000), 218, 202 Leonhard, Luise, 70–71, 75, 82 Leuthold, Heinrich, 48 Levy, Daniel, films by: Meschugge, 15, 231, 237–42 “Lex Heym,” 10, 137 Libeskind, Daniel, 14, 220–21, 242 Liebermann, Max, 118, 120 literature debate (1990), 1, 3–4, 11, 16, 18, 59–60, 90 Loest, Erich, 130, 137–38 Love Parade (Berlin), 193 Lübbe, Hermann, 34 Luhmann, Niklas, 57 Lukács, Georg, 10, 34, 126, 128, 130, 140 Luxemburg, Rosa, 153 Mann, Heinrich, 5, 31, 43–48, 51, 56, 93, 103 Mann, Heinrich, works by: Der Untertan, 44–45; “Geist und Tat,” 44 Mann, Klaus, 100, 103 Mann, Thomas, 2, 5, 30–31, 46, 50–51, 53, 91, 93–95, 99–100, 103, 117–18, 121, 125 Mann, Thomas, works by: Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, 4, 31; “Von deutscher Republik,” 5, 50 Mannheim, Karl, 163, 177–78, 182 Maron, Monika, 12, 165–69, 181 Maron, Monika, works by: Animal Triste, 12, 165, 175– 78, 182; Flugasche, 168–69; Pawels Briefe, 167 Marquard, Odo, 34, 38 Marx, Karl, 5, 8, 34, 36, 154–55, 165

INDEX

Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, 205 Mayer, Hans, 127 McCarthy Commission, 127 Meckel, Eberhard, 94 Mehring, Walter, 147 Meinecke, Friedrich, 46 Mendelsohn, Moses, 26 Mensching, Steffen, 143–59, 264 Merkel, Angela, 218 Merz, Friedrich, 218 Merz, Gerhard, 194 Metzger, Johanna, 72–73, 82 Meyer, Laurenz, 218 Michaelis-Jena, Ruth, 71 Mielke, Erich, 137 Möllemann, Jürgen, 19 Möller, Horst, 218 Molo, Walter von, 2, 94–95 Montaigne, Michel de, 254 Morgner, Irmtraud, 164 Mühsam, Erich, 5, 148, 153–54 Müller, Heiner, 1, 11, 152, 155 Müller, Hermann, 50 Müller, Jan-Werner, 16, 246, 248–49, 255 Mueller-Stahl, Armin, 138 Musil, Robert, 24 Musil, Robert, works by: Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, 34 National Socialism, 1–8, 13–19, 25, 30, 45–49, 51–53, 55–57, 63–86, 89–96, 98–105, 107–8, 110–12, 119–20, 138, 145, 197, 201–6, 208, 210–22, 231–35, 238–39, 241–42, 245, 248, 250, 256, 258–59, 264 Naumann, Konrad, 137 Naumann, Michael, 164–65, 207, 221 Nelki, Erna, 64, 68, 74, 76, 80–86 neo-Nazism, 201, 205 Neutsch, Erik, works by: Spur der Steine, 135 New Right, the, 17, 228, 230, 242

E 271

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 16, 28, 32, 37, 48, 109, 120–22, 246, 251, 252, 257–58 Noll, Dieter, 136 Nolte, Ernst, 201, 218, 232 Nooteboom, Cees, works by: Allerseelen, 197 Norway, 74 Nostitz-Rieneck, Robert von, 26 Okri, Ben, 188 Oktoberklub (GDR), 144, 157–58 Olympic Games, 25 Omgus (US Office of Military Government for Germany), 7, 96–97 Oranienburg (concentration camp), 5 Ossietzsky, Carl von, 5 Oz, Amos, 241 Parteiamtliche Prüfungskommission zum Schutze des NS-Schrifttums, 91, 105 PDS (Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus), 12, 167 PEN (Germany), 171–72 Pensky, Max, 246, 249 Perlas, Nicolas, 23 philo-Semitism, 15, 227, 229, 231, 235–36, 239, 242 Pieck, Wilhelm, 125 Piscator, Erwin, 148, 151 Plenge, Johann, 30 Plenzdorf, Ulrich, works by: Die neuen Leiden des jungen Werther, 10, 135 Poche, Klaus, 137 Prantl, Karl von, 27 Preußische Akademie der Dichtung, 91 Proust, Marcel, 126, 257 Prussia, 3, 17, 48, 91, 100, 112, 134

272 E

INDEX

Rabinbach, Anson, 254–57 Raschke, Martin, 94 Rau, Johannes, 201, 216–18, 222–23 Raulff, Ulrich, 18 Rehmann, Ruth, 12, 166–67, 169, 181 Rehmann, Ruth, works by: Illusionen, 166; Unterwegs in fremden Träumen, 12, 165, 167, 170–72 Reich-Ranicki, Marcel, 18–19, 108, 134–35 “Reichskristallnacht” (9 November 1938), 216, 222, 228 Reichskulturkammer, 91 Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, 101, 105 Reichsschrifttumskammer, 5, 7, 45, 47, 91–93, 101, 104–5 Reichsstelle zur Förderung des deutschen Schrifttums, 91, 105 Reinhardt, Klaus, 205 Remarque, Erich Maria, 5 Revolution (1989), 11–12, 54, 127, 139, 158, 164, 167, 170– 71, 175, 178–79, 181, 186, 192–94, 204, 216 Richter, Hans Werner, 8, 55, 58, 60, 95–97, 105, 107–8 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 32, 156 Rinser, Luise, 7 Rischowksi, Ira, 68–69, 71–73, 84–85 Romanticism, 26, 37, 264 Rosenberg, Alfred, 105 Rosh, Lea, 13, 206–7, 220, 228 Ross, Jan, 210, 215 Die Rote Fahne (journal), 98 Roth, Joseph, 197 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 26 Der Ruf (journal), 7, 96–97, 102, 105

Saar, Ferdinand von, 48 SAP (Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei), 74 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 43, 246, 252– 54, 257 Schädlich, Joachim, 138 Schauwecker, Franz, 49 Schiller, Friedrich, 26–27, 30, 108, 115, 123, 179 Schirrmacher, Frank, 2–3, 11, 18–19 Schlesinger, Klaus, 137 Schliemann, Heinrich, 28 Schlink, Bernhard, works by: Der Vorleser, 4, 8, 17–18, 109–11 Schmidt, Helmut, 43, 56 Schmitt, Carl, 249, 250–51 Schneider, Peter, works by: Eduards Heimkehr, 190–91, 197; Der Mauerspringer, 197 Schnurre, Wolfdietrich, 95 Schrader, Maria, 231, 236 Schröder, Gerhard, 43, 202–5, 208–10, 216, 219, 221, 231 Schröder, Richard, 207 Schubert, Dieter, 137 Schutzverband deutscher Schriftsteller, 91 Sebald, W. G., works by: Die Ausgewanderten, 18; Luftkrieg und Literatur, 7, 17, 230 Second World War, 3, 6, 8, 14–15, 52, 63–86, 90, 93, 95, 97, 101, 108–9, 111, 114, 118–20, 126, 170–71, 191–92, 201–5, 208, 213–14, 221, 230, 233, 236, 238, 247, 250, 253, 255, 257 SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands), 9–12, 53–54, 125–33, 136, 138, 144, 149, 153, 164–65, 167–68, 181 Seghers, Anna, 8, 100, 125 Serra, Richard, 13, 220 Shakespeare, William, 26, 70 Shiaishi, Kazuko, 188

INDEX

Simmel, Georg, 25, 33–36 Singebewegung (GDR), 144–45, 149 Sinn und Form (journal), 132 Sloterdijk, Peter, 16–17, 246 Sloterdijk, Peter, works by: Regeln für den Menschenpark, 16, 246, 257–60 Smith, Patricia, 188 Socialist Realism, 8, 10, 90, 126– 32, 144, 152 Sombart, Werner, 30, 38 Soviet Union, 6, 9, 52, 54, 97, 125–28, 130, 132, 138–39, 167–169, 218, 233 Sozialdemokratische Wählerinitiative, 56 Spanish Civil War, 147, 153, 156–57 SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands), 49–50, 54–56, 74, 92, 190, 203, 228–29, 231 Specht, Minna, 69, 71, 74, 76 Speer, Albert, 194 “Spiegel” Affair (1962), 58, 60 Spiegel, Paul, 201, 216, 222–23 Spielberg, Steven, films by: Saving Private Ryan, 213–14; Schindler’s List, 213–14, 222 Spielhagen, August von, 119 Spiro, Anna, 68 Stade, Martin, 137 Stalin, Josef, 9, 127 Stalinism, 127, 130–31, 137, 168–69, 172, 259 Stangl, Reinhard, 194 State Security Service (Stasi), 1, 3, 53–54, 89, 133, 137, 159, 168 Stockholm Holocaust Conference, 201, 219 Strauß, Botho, 59 Strauß, Franz Josef, 58 Strieder, Peter, 213 Strittmatter, Erwin, works by: Ole Bienkopp, 135

E 273

Strobel, Käte, 74 “Stunde Null” (1945), 6, 95, 98, 107, 231 Suttner, Bertha von, 117–18, 120 Die Tat (journal), 49 Theresienstadt (Terezin), 15, 236 Thierse, Wolfgang, 190, 212 Thieß, Frank, 2, 94, 105 Treblinka, 238 Treichel, Hans-Ulrich, works by: Der Verlorene, 18, 264 Trittin, Jürgen, 218 Tucholsky, Kurt, 5, 50, 150 Ulbricht, Walter, 51, 53, 130–31, 135 Ungers, Simon, 220 Unification (1871), 48 Unification (1990), 1, 9, 11–12, 14, 19, 48, 57–58, 89–90, 139, 169, 180–81, 210, 215, 227– 28, 237, 245, 248 United States of America, 2, 3, 6– 7, 14, 96–97, 103, 105, 126, 129, 137, 139, 182, 206, 211, 218–19, 222, 232, 237–38 Valentin, Karl, 147, 149 Verband deutscher Schriftsteller (FRG), 56 Vischer, Friedrich Theodor, 30, 38 Völkerschlachtdenkmal (Leipzig), 46 Voltaire, 31, 43 Wagner, Richard, 4 Walser, Martin, 2, 15–19, 55, 90, 231, 241–42, 256–57, 264 Walser, Martin, works by: Erfahrungen beim Verfassen einer Sonntagsrede. Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels 1998, 15–16, 59, 211, 213, 222, 228; Tod eines Kritikers, 18–19

274 E

INDEX

Wandervogel movement, 25 Wawerzinek, Peter, works by: Café Komplott, 190–91 Weber, Alfred, 24–25, 35–36 Weber, Max, 46 Wedekind, Frank, 32 Wegner, Bettina, 157 Wehrmacht exhibition, 14 Weimar Republic, 5, 24, 35, 46– 50, 56, 89, 92–93, 98, 105, 118, 148, 151 Weinmüller, Gesine, 220 Weiskopf, F. C., 154, 159 Weiss, Peter, works by: Die Ästhetik des Widerstands, 157; Marat/Sade, 108 Weizsäcker, Richard von, 219–20 Wende. See revolution Wenzel, Hans-Eckardt, 143–159, 264 Weyrauch, Wolfgang, 55 Weyrauch, Wolfgang, works by: Tausend Gramm, 6–7, 95 Wickert, Ulrich, 43–44 Wiechert, Ernst, 3, 8, 96 Wilhelm II (emperor), 45–46, 120, 166, 205 Wilkinson, Ellen, 75 Wolf, Christa, 9, 11, 53, 60, 144, 164 Wolf, Christa, works by: Kassandra, 10, 135; Kindheitsmuster, 8, 108–11; Nachdenken über Christa T., 134; Was bleibt, 1 Wolffsohn, Michael, 228, 242 Worpswede (artists’ movement), 25 Wortmann, Sönke, films by: Der Bewegte Mann, 232 Writers’ Congress (GDR 1956), 128, 131 Writers’ Congress (GDR 1987), 138

Writers’ Union (GDR), 1, 137, 170 Zeplin, Rosemarie, 165 Zweig, Arnold, 8, 125